HOST DAEMON

CIPHER.SYS uses a custom Node.js daemon (server.js) rather than a standard web backend.

LOCAL_ONLY TOPOLOGY

All state is maintained in-memory on the daemon and replicated to the client's localStorage.

let dbState = { tasks: [], stats: {}, lastBurnTime: 0 }; 

Whenever the client reconnects, the socket fires sync_state. If the server's lastBurnTime is newer than the client's, the client undergoes an immediate data wipe to respect the Scorched Earth protocol executed on another node.

DETACHED EXECUTION

The bin/cipher.js launcher spawns the server using Node's child_process.spawn with { detached: true, stdio: 'ignore' }.

This allows the CLI to close immediately, leaving the daemon running silently in the OS background. The only way to gracefully stop it is via the terminate_host_process socket event, which is fired when the UI countdown hits zero.