haniel

A service runner that your AI agent can operate.

haniel manages processes, polls git repos, and exposes everything through MCP — so Claude Code can deploy, restart, monitor, and configure your services through natural conversation.

You:    "Deploy the latest changes to api-server"
Claude: haniel_pull(repo="api") → haniel_restart(service="api-server")
        ✅ Pulled 3 commits, api-server restarted successfully.

The problem

You have a few services running on a machine. You want to:

• Deploy by pulling from git, not by building Docker images
• Let your AI agent handle routine ops (restart, rollback, check logs)
• See what's happening from a dashboard

Existing tools don't quite fit:

Tool	Gap
PM2 / systemd	No AI interface. Agent must generate shell commands and parse text output.
Docker Compose	Assumes containerized workflows. Overkill when you just want to git pull and restart.
Coolify / CapRover	Full PaaS with their own deployment model. You're adopting a platform, not a tool.

haniel is a single YAML file + a process that your AI agent already knows how to talk to.

How it works

1. You write haniel.yaml (or let Claude Code do it) — repos to poll, services to run, how they depend on each other
2. haniel runs as a service — polls git, manages processes, restarts on crash
3. Claude Code connects via MCP — every operation is a tool call, not a shell command

For agents: See haniel.yaml.example and Configuration Reference for the full schema.

# haniel.yaml
poll_interval: 60

repos:
  backend:
    url: https://github.com/you/backend.git
    branch: main
    path: ./.services/backend

services:
  api:
    run: python -m uvicorn app:main --port 8000
    cwd: ./.services/backend
    repo: backend
    hooks:
      post_pull: pip install -r requirements.txt

That's it. haniel watches the repo, pulls changes, runs the hook, and restarts the service.

Features

• Git polling — watches repositories, pulls on new commits
• Process management — start, stop, restart with dependency ordering
• Lifecycle hooks — pre_start and post_pull (installs, builds, migrations)
• Health monitoring — crash detection, exponential backoff, circuit breaker
• MCP server — full control surface via Streamable HTTP
• Web dashboard — real-time UI with Claude Code chat panel
• Runtime config — add/update/remove services without restart
• Self-update — two-loop architecture for updating its own code
• Webhooks — Slack, Discord, or JSON on deploys and failures

Quick start

Install

# PowerShell as Administrator (Windows 10+, Python 3.11+)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eiaserinnys/haniel/main/install-haniel.ps1 | iex

Connect Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "haniel": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:3200/mcp/http"
    }
  }
}

Now Claude Code can operate your infrastructure:

"What services are running?"          → haniel://status
"Show me api-server logs"             → haniel_read_logs(service="api-server")
"Restart the worker"                  → haniel_restart(service="worker")
"Pull and deploy backend"             → haniel_update(service="api")
"Add a new service"                   → haniel_create_service_config(...)

Self-update

haniel solves the "surgeon can't operate on themselves" problem with a two-loop design:

WinSW (Windows service)
  └── haniel-runner.ps1  (outer loop — survives updates)
       └── haniel run    (inner loop — the actual service)

When haniel detects changes to its own repo, it exits with code 10. The outer loop runs git pull + pip install and relaunches.

Documentation

• Configuration Reference
• Specifications
• ADR-0001: WinSW over NSSM
• ADR-0002: Self-update architecture
• ADR-0003: Directory structure

Development

git clone https://github.com/eiaserinnys/haniel.git
cd haniel
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest

Dashboard frontend (React):

cd dashboard
pnpm install && pnpm run build

License

MIT