jobd

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# jobd

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**A self-hostable, GPU-aware job broker for your own machines — with native MCP/agent integration.**

> Like [task-spooler](https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/man1/tsp.1.html) or [pueue](https://github.com/Nukesor/pueue), but across *all* your machines — and VRAM-aware.

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<!-- mcp-name: io.github.musharna/jobd -->

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/musharna/jobd/main/docs/assets/demo.svg" alt="jobd in action: job fleet status shows four workers and their versions; a GPU job routes to the worker with enough free VRAM and streams back; a stdin batch submits two jobs at once; job logs -f follows one to completion" width="100%">
</p>

You have a couple of boxes with GPUs — a workstation, a server, maybe a laptop — wired together over [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com/) or a LAN. You want to fire off training runs, data pipelines, and long batch jobs from anywhere, have them land on whichever machine actually has the VRAM free, survive across sessions, and get preempted cleanly when something more important shows up. You don't have a cloud, a Kubernetes cluster, or a Slurm install, and you don't want one.

jobd is that missing piece: a small broker that turns a handful of personal machines into a single queue — and an LLM agent can drive it directly.

```bash
# from any machine on your tailnet:
job submit --project myproj --gpu --vram-required 16 --wait -- python train.py
# → routed to whichever worker has ≥16 GB VRAM free, streamed back to your terminal
```

## Why it exists

Most schedulers assume a datacenter. The lightweight ones that don't (a bare `nohup`, a tmux session, an ssh-and-pray script) give you nothing: no queue, no VRAM-aware routing, no preemption, no record of what ran where. jobd fills the gap between "ssh in and run it" and "stand up Slurm":

- **VRAM-fit routing.** The broker matches each job against live worker capacity (free VRAM / RAM / CPUs, capability tags, arch/OS) and dispatches to a worker that actually fits — instead of you guessing which box is free.
- **Preempt + checkpoint.** A higher-priority job can preempt a running one: the worker sends `SIGTERM`, the workload gets a grace window to checkpoint, then `SIGKILL`. A preempted job reaches a terminal `preempted` state with a durable checkpoint to resume from — it isn't silently re-run. (See [docs/preemption.md](https://github.com/musharna/jobd/blob/main/docs/preemption.md).)
- **Survives sessions.** Submit, close your laptop, check back tomorrow. Jobs live in the broker, not your shell.
- **Agent-native.** Ships a first-class [MCP](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/) server so an LLM agent (Claude Code, etc.) can submit, monitor, and babysit jobs as tool calls — the thing most schedulers bolt on as an afterthought, if at all.
- **Yours.** One broker process you run on a machine you own. No accounts, no egress, no per-GPU-hour billing. Tailnet-bound by default.

## Why not just use…?

| Tool                                                                           | What it gives you                                           | Why jobd instead                                                                                               |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **`nohup` / `tmux` / ssh-and-pray**                                            | Runs a command on one box                                   | No queue, no VRAM-aware routing, no preemption, no record of what ran where                                    |
| **[task-spooler](https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/man1/tsp.1.html)** | A real job queue — on a single machine                      | jobd queues across _all_ your machines and routes by live VRAM/CPU fit                                         |
| **[Pueue](https://github.com/Nukesor/pueue)**                                  | The best single-machine command queue daemon                | Pueue's own README declares distributed execution out of scope — jobd is that missing layer, plus GPU awareness |
| **[HyperQueue](https://github.com/It4innovations/hyperqueue)**                 | Multi-machine task scheduling with HPC roots, single binary | HQ counts GPUs but doesn't track VRAM, and has no preemption/checkpoint contract or agent interface             |
| **Slurm**                                                                      | Datacenter-grade scheduling                                 | Heavy to stand up and operate for 2–3 personal boxes; jobd is one process + a poller per host                  |
| **SkyPilot / Modal / dstack**                                                  | Provision and run on clouds + your own machines             | SkyPilot's "existing machines" mode installs a k3s cluster on your boxes; dstack wants Docker + passwordless sudo on every host. jobd is one process + a poller — no containers, no sudo, no K8s |
| **Ray**                                                                        | A distributed-compute framework                             | jobd is a job _queue_, not a programming model — submit any command, no code changes, GPU-fit routing built in |

Closest in spirit are Pueue and task-spooler (single-machine by design) and HyperQueue (multi-machine, HPC-shaped). jobd's niche is the 2–5-GPU homelab: multi-machine **live VRAM-fit** routing + **preempt/checkpoint** + a **native MCP interface** — a combination none of the above offers — with nothing heavier than a Python process per host.

## Architecture

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/musharna/jobd/main/docs/assets/architecture.svg" alt="Architecture: job CLI, jobd-mcp MCP tools, and HTTP/SSE clients talk to the jobd broker (FastAPI — queue, VRAM matcher, priorities, SQLite) over one tailnet; the broker dispatches via long-poll claims and heartbeats to workers A (24 GB GPU), B (8 GB GPU), and C (CPU-only)" width="640">
</p>

<details>
<summary>Diagram source (mermaid)</summary>

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    CLI["job CLI"]:::client --> B
    MCP["jobd-mcp<br/>MCP tools"]:::client --> B
    API["HTTP · SSE"]:::client --> B
    B["<b>jobd broker</b> — FastAPI<br/>queue · matcher · priorities · SQLite"]:::broker
    B <-->|poll · dispatch| WA["worker A<br/>24 GB GPU"]:::worker
    B <-->|poll · dispatch| WB["worker B<br/>8 GB GPU"]:::worker
    B <-->|poll · dispatch| WC["worker C<br/>CPU-only"]:::worker
    classDef client fill:#1f2937,stroke:#4b5563,color:#e5e7eb;
    classDef broker fill:#0e7490,stroke:#155e75,color:#ecfeff;
    classDef worker fill:#14532d,stroke:#166534,color:#dcfce7;
```

</details>

Workers **poll** the broker (pull model — no inbound connection to a worker); the broker matches each job against live capacity and hands it back on the poll. One broker process, one poller per host.

- **Broker** — a FastAPI + SQLite service. Holds the queue, runs the matcher, resolves per-project priorities and defaults, exposes a small HTTP API and an SSE stream. Single source of truth.
- **Workers** — lightweight polling agents, one per host. Each advertises live capacity via heartbeat, claims jobs it can run, executes them (`shell=False`, no shell-injection surface), streams logs back, and honors preemption signals.
- **Clients** — the `job` CLI, the `jobd-mcp` MCP server, or anything that speaks the HTTP API.

## Install

```bash
pip install jobd               # broker + CLI
pip install "jobd[mcp]"        # adds the MCP server
pip install "jobd[worker]"     # adds the worker daemon (jobd-worker)
```

Requires Python ≥ 3.11. Everything ships in the one `jobd` package: the broker (`jobd`), the CLI (`job`), the MCP server (`jobd-mcp`), and the worker (`jobd-worker`). The worker's runtime deps (httpx, psutil, pyyaml, nvidia-ml-py) live behind the `[worker]` extra since they're only needed on machines that actually run jobs. `scripts/install-worker.sh` sets a worker up under `~/jobd-worker` with its own venv and a generated config.

## Quickstart (single host)

```bash
# 1. start the broker (binds 127.0.0.1:8765 by default)
JOBD_ALLOW_NO_AUTH=1 jobd          # no-auth is fine for a loopback-only broker

# 2. in another shell, install + start a worker pointed at it
pip install "jobd[worker]"
JOBD_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8765 JOBD_WORKER_HOST=local jobd-worker

# 3. submit a job and wait for it
job submit --project demo --wait -- echo hello
job list
job logs <id>
```

For a real multi-host deployment (Docker broker + systemd workers, Tailscale binding, shared auth token), see **[docs/security.md](https://github.com/musharna/jobd/blob/main/docs/security.md)** and the templates in `docker-compose.yml` and `scripts/`. Adding a worker to a running fleet is one command:

```bash
job fleet add user@newbox      # ssh in, install pinned to the broker's version,
                               # wire systemd units + the self-update timer,
                               # verify it registers. `job fleet status` shows drift.
```

Day-2 operations (