Macos on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

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.)

TCC pins your Accessibility grant to a cdhash. Every rebuild breaks it.

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

My daemon's preflight log said `osascript is not allowed assistive access. (-1719)`. System Settings disagreed — the entry was right there, toggled on. Spoiler: ad-hoc codesigning pins TCC's designated requirement to the binary's cdhash, and `bun build --compile` produces a different cdhash on every rebuild.

I’m building a Stream Deck plugin called ClaudeDeck — Stream Deck is Elgato’s little USB grid of programmable keys with LCD displays under each one. The plugin talks to a background daemon (a long-running process that starts at login and waits for events), and that daemon needs to call System Events via AppleScript to switch Ghostty tabs (Ghostty is my terminal emulator) whenever I press a Stream Deck key. macOS gates that capability — automating other apps — through System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, the pane you’ve probably toggled for tools like Rectangle or BetterTouchTool. So on first install I added the daemon, toggled it on, and got back to work.

What replaced CGEventPost in my Stream Deck daemon

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

I press the Stream Deck key. The daemon logs the press, synthesizes `Cmd+Opt+;` through CoreGraphics, and exits cleanly. Wispr Flow does nothing. Three Apple subsystems and one decompiled Electron bundle later, the working trigger turned out to be a one-line URL.

The plan was the boring kind: Stream Deck key (the physical button on Elgato’s programmable USB grid) → WebSocket message → my daemon (long-running background process) → synthesized global hotkey → Wispr Flow’s hands-free dictation starts — Wispr Flow is the voice-to-text Mac app that types your speech into the focused window — → I talk → words show up in my editor. I’d done variants of this with osascript (macOS’s command-line AppleScript runner) years ago. Should have taken an afternoon.