launchctl unload returned 0. The daemon was still running. KeepAlive raced.

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

`launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.nickboy.claudedeck.plist` exited 0. Then `pgrep -f claudedeck-daemon` printed a fresh PID. Three seconds after the "unload succeeded" line. Spoiler: KeepAlive is a polling supervisor, not an event-driven one, and when you tell launchd to tear a job down, there is a window where the supervisor has already noticed the previous PID is gone and started a replacement.

(One-paragraph grounding if launchd isn’t your daily driver: launchd is macOS’s init system — the equivalent of systemd on Linux or Windows Services on Windows. It boots PID 1, brings up daemons, restarts them when they crash. A LaunchAgent is a per-user launchd job, defined by an XML plist — property list — at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/<name>.plist. KeepAlive is one of the plist keys; set it to true and launchd will respawn the job whenever it exits. launchctl is the CLI you use to load, unload, and inspect those jobs. The Linux mental model: think systemctl driving systemd unit files. The Stream Deck plugin and its daemon are described in the TCC cdhash trap post if you want the project context.)

Daemon on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

launchctl unload returned 0. The daemon was still running. KeepAlive raced.