Daemons

The Daemons screen is where you connect hosts to Riptides and manage how they authenticate. A daemon is the Riptides agent that runs on each host; once a host has one, the workloads on it can be given identities and brought under policy.

Open it from System → Daemons in the sidebar (/ui/daemons). The screen has four tabs: Daemons, Daemon Groups, Authentication Methods, and Join Tokens.

Daemons tab

Lists the hosts that have a connected daemon, with their status. This is also where you start connecting a new host, using the Attach Daemon button in the top right.

Attach a daemon

1. Choose Attach Daemon.
2. Pick the tab that matches your host: Linux, Lima, Kubernetes, or GitHub Actions.
3. Under Authentication method, select a method you have enabled (see the next section). If none exist yet, the dialog links you to the Authentication Methods tab to set one up first.
4. If you chose Join Token, pick an existing token or choose Create join token to make one on the spot. On the Kubernetes tab, set the Namespace (the default riptides-system suits most installs).
5. Copy the generated command and run it on the host. It installs and connects the daemon for you.

The host then appears in the Daemons tab within a few seconds.

Authentication Methods tab

A daemon proves which host it is when it connects, using an authentication method. This tab shows a card per method: Join Token, Kubernetes, JWT / OIDC, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SSH Certificate, X.509 Certificate, and GitHub Actions.

Choose Enable on a card to turn it on and fill in its settings. Join Token is the simplest to start with (you give it a Name). On a cloud host you can instead enable Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure so hosts attest themselves with no token to manage.

Join Tokens tab

This tab appears once a Join Token authentication method exists. Choose Create Join Token, optionally set a Workload ID and an Expires In (days) value, and choose Create. Tokens can be deleted from their row (with a confirmation) but not edited.

Daemon Groups tab

If you run many hosts, group them so you can manage and target them together. Choose Create Daemon Group, give it a Daemon Group ID and an optional Name, add Selectors that match the hosts (key/value pairs, with OR groups for alternatives), and save. You can then scope a workload identity to the whole group instead of a single daemon.

Next steps

• Identities: give a workload on a connected host its identity.
• Architecture: where the daemon sits in the platform.