One shared, detached daemon per project root: every `codegraph serve --mcp` is a thin stdio<->socket proxy (Unix socket / Windows named pipe) to it, so N agents in one repo share a single file watcher, SQLite connection, and tree-sitter warm-up instead of N copies. The daemon outlives any single session and reaps via client-refcount + idle timeout; `CODEGRAPH_NO_DAEMON=1` opts out.
Hardened during review: detached-process lifecycle (preserves the #277 watchdog via the proxy; the daemon no longer orphans on host SIGKILL), atomic lockfile + pid-verified stale-clear (no double-daemon on concurrent startup), realpath root canonicalization. Validated on macOS, Linux (Docker - 3x fewer inotify watches for 3 agents), and Windows (named pipes); A/B confirms byte-identical tool output vs direct mode. Closes#411.
Co-Authored-By: Colby McHenry <me@colbymchenry.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
