[Cle2ment]

Description

Every backend launch — the startup health-check launch and every 60s-supervision (re)launch alike — now spawns node directly on the resolved CLI entry. The visible Windows Terminal startup tab (wt.exe -w 0 nt --title agentmemory …) is removed.

 launch(reason)                      // startup | recovery
   resolve newest dist/cli.mjs (npx cache / global install)
-  if win32 && startup: spawnVisibleTab(wt.exe … node cli)   // visible, takes focus once
-  else:               spawnSilent(node cli)                 // detached, stdio ignore, windowsHide
+  spawnSilent(node cli)                                      // both modes, identical, always silent

Why the 4.2.0 rollback to a visible tab was misattributed. The console flashes seen at OpenCode startup come from OpenCode's own local-MCP spawn mechanism, not from this plugin:

• Live process-tree audit of a running OpenCode server on Windows: every local MCP server is spawned as cmd.exe /d /s /c "npx …" with its own conhost.exe (sciverse, playwright, @agentmemory/mcp, zai-vision, codegraph, rea, officecli, uvx ×2, …), and every OpenCode server instance spawns the whole local fleet → repeated console-window allocations at startup and on MCP restarts.
• The backend this plugin spawns (node → cli.mjs → iii.exe, direct child of opencode.exe) has no cmd.exe and no conhost anywhere in its tree — this launch path cannot allocate a window.
• Upstream confirmation (anomalyco/opencode, verified at v2.1.4 and dev): local MCP servers spawn through cross-spawn (packages/util/src/cross-spawn-spawner.ts), which rewrites npx → cmd.exe /d /s /c "npx …". The background service opencode.exe serve --service is started detached and ends up without a console, so every console-subsystem child allocates a NEW console on start — windowsHide on the child spawn does not prevent that allocation. Open upstream issues with matching traces: #51887 · #52266 · #52281 · #56704; the fix PR #52594 ("give the Windows service a hidden console") was closed unmerged on 2026-10-12, so v2.1.4 still ships the behavior.

Startup launches still do not count toward the failure backoff (a failed startup is retried ~90s later, not 180s). Launch diagnostics move entirely to the plugin warn log plus npx @agentmemory/agentmemory doctor (the tab's closeOnExit: graceful error-visibility is gone with the tab).

Type of Change

• Bug fix (non-breaking change that fixes an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change that adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• Documentation update
• Chore (build, CI, dependencies)

Checklist

• npm run typecheck passes
• npm run build succeeds
• Documentation has been updated (if applicable)
• I have read the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines
• My commits follow the Conventional Commits format

Evidence

Before (4.2.1): a startup launch (backend down when the plugin loads) runs wt.exe -w 0 nt --title agentmemory … node <cli> → a visible Windows Terminal tab appears and takes focus once.

After (this branch) — backend stopped via npx @agentmemory/agentmemory stop, then the freshly built plugin loaded through a standalone harness:

[harness] loaded dist/agentmemory-launcher.js, id=agentmemory-launcher
[agentmemory-launcher] info: health-check loop started
[agentmemory-launcher] info: launching backend silently via 0.9.30 (…\@agentmemory\agentmemory\dist\cli.mjs)
HARNESS node.exe [52248]
  node.exe [37964] node …\dist\cli.mjs        ← no cmd.exe, no conhost in the tree
    iii.exe  [52076] …iii.exe --config …      ← spawned hidden by the CLI itself
→ GET /agentmemory/livez = 200 (backend restored)
[harness] cleanup done, exiting                // unload cleanup exercised

Merge danger: two-way door — revert restores the 4.2.x two-mode behavior; no persisted state changes. Blast radius is the Windows launch UX only: supervision loop, lock/backoff logic, and non-Windows paths are untouched (spawnSilent is the recovery path already shipped since 4.1.0).

Related Issues

Upstream (root cause of the flashing this PR's history was blamed on): anomalyco/opencode #51887 · #52266 · #52281 · #56704 · closed-unmerged fix PR #52594.

Screenshots (if applicable)

N/A — evidence is process-tree based (no window is the point).