Cockpit Overview

What Cockpit is, the operating model, and the section map

AIWG Cockpit

Local control plane for AIWG and multi-stack agentic sessions.

Cockpit is the operator console for agentic work: observe live agent sessions, attach to terminals, handle approvals, launch runtime targets (host, container, VM), recover stale agents, and coordinate AIWG actions — all from one local, token-gated surface. It fronts the AIWG CLI and the agentic-sandbox executor; it replaces neither.

npm i -g aiwg        # install the base AIWG CLI
aiwg use cockpit     # install the opt-in Cockpit package, version-locked to AIWG
aiwg cockpit         # launch the local Bridge + web UI

The Bridge serves the UI at `http://127.0.0.1:8140` by default and expects an agentic-sandbox executor at `http://127.0.0.1:8122`.

The model in one paragraph

Cockpit is a session-control surface, not a CLI runner. Agents run the CLI; you direct the agents. An action button injects a command into an agentic session, and the agent in that session runs it. Control-plane requests (lifecycle, approvals, session create) go through a local token-gated Bridge; the terminal data plane connects your browser directly to the executor via a Bridge-issued attach URL. Cockpit is opt-in and separately published — nothing here ships in the base `aiwg` npm package.

Section contents

Page	Covers
Installation	Install and launch paths (CLI, direct npm, dev workspace, desktop, VS Code), version pinning, troubleshooting
Architecture	Shells → Bridge → executor topology, control vs data plane, component map, ports, the serve↔cockpit relationship
Surfaces	All 11 tabs — Home, Inventory, Running, Missions, Sessions, Approvals, Explore, Library, Telemetry, Memory, Actions — plus the launch/start modals
Sessions	The observe-first attach model: take control, replay, per-session persistent terminals, backends, response detection
Bridge API	Every Bridge endpoint, request gating, environment variables, audit events
Trust & Security	Token/CSRF/origin gating, OS keychain (strict mode), runtime/transport/daemon posture badges, the audit log, library invariants
Recovery	Stale-agent recovery for Docker and VM runtimes, destroy fallbacks, host-daemon guidance
Development	Dev/test/mock/release patterns: one-command bring-up, port allocation, the automated-test-only mock boundary, verification tiers
Releases	How `@aiwg/cockpit` ships: channels, publish leg, pre-tag gates

What Cockpit is not

Not a replacement for `aiwg`. The CLI remains the source of truth for

install, deploy, discovery, and maintenance operations.

Not an agent runtime. Agent execution belongs to the provider stack and

the agentic-sandbox executor.

Not cloud-hosted. The surface is local-first: loopback Bridge,

token-gated browser/VS Code/Tauri shells, operator-owned runtime files.

Quick orientation

New operator? Start with Installation, then let the

Home tab's first-run tour walk you through starting a session.

Something's stuck? Recovery covers stale agents on every

runtime family, including the VM path added in 2026.7.

Building on Cockpit? Architecture and

Bridge API are the contract; the Development page has the one-command dev bring-up.