Headless Server

Run wick as a long-lived process on a remote VPS, bare-metal Linux box, or anywhere without a desktop session. No tray icon, no GUI.

Two ways to run, pick one:

Mode	Command	When
Daemon	wick start / wick stop / wick restart	Quick install on a single box — wick manages its own PID file at ~/.wick/run.pid, logs to ~/.wick/daemon.log
Foreground	wick server (or wick all)	Supervised by systemd / Docker / pm2 — the supervisor handles restart + logs

Full subcommand list: App CLI Reference.

Quickstart (daemon)

chmod +x wick
./wick setup     # first-boot init — generates credentials, SQLite DB
./wick start     # spawn detached, web UI + worker
./wick status    # PID, uptime, log path

Web UI at http://localhost:9425. Initial credentials print to the daemon log and land in ~/.wick/INITIAL_CREDENTIALS.txt (mode 0600, deleted after first login).

Stop / restart:

./wick stop
./wick restart

Quickstart (foreground)

For Docker, systemd, or any process supervisor:

./wick setup
./wick server     # web UI only
./wick all        # web UI + worker in one process

Blocks the calling shell; Ctrl+C exits cleanly. Logs go to stdout.

Tips & tricks

Bind beyond localhost

Default is localhost-only. To expose on all interfaces:

HOST=0.0.0.0 ./wick start    # or ./wick server for foreground

Don't ship that to the open internet without a reverse proxy + TLS in front.

Reverse proxy (Caddy)

Minimal Caddyfile:

wick.example.com {
  reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:9425
}

Set APP_BASE_URL=https://wick.example.com so OAuth callbacks and Slack request signing line up. Mismatch breaks Slack Socket Mode handshakes.

systemd unit (Linux)

/etc/systemd/system/wick.service:

[Unit]
Description=Wick agent host
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=wick
WorkingDirectory=/opt/wick
ExecStart=/opt/wick/wick server
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
Environment=APP_BASE_URL=https://wick.example.com
Environment=HOST=0.0.0.0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then systemctl enable --now wick. Logs via journalctl -u wick -f.

Headless build (no GUI libs)

If you're building from source on a server that doesn't have libgl / libx11, use the headless build flag to drop fyne.io/systray:

wick build --headless -o wick-server

The tray subcommand becomes a stub; server, worker, mcp serve, mcp install/uninstall keep working.

Postgres instead of SQLite

For multi-instance deploys or higher write throughput:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://wick:pass@db.local:5432/wick ./wick start

SQLite WAL mode handles single-host concurrency fine, but Postgres is the move once you have multiple wick processes hitting one DB.

Log location

zerolog writes per-day files at ~/.wick/logs/wick-YYYY-MM-DD.log plus stderr. Rotation kicks in on the next launch on a new day; files older than log_retention_days (default 7) get deleted.

Port pinning

9425 is the default (spells "WICK" on T9). Override via PORT=8080 env or port: in ~/.wick/config.json.

Auto-start on boot (no systemd unit)

If you don't want to hand-roll a systemd unit:

./wick service install     # registers systemd-user unit running `wick all`
./wick service status
./wick service uninstall

User-scoped (no sudo needed). On a Linux server, service install automatically tries to enable systemd lingering for the current user so the daemon survives logout and starts at boot. On most modern distros this succeeds silently. If the host denies it, run wick service status — the note field prints the exact sudo loginctl enable-linger <user> command for your user. Details: App CLI — Auto-start service.

See also

• App CLI Reference — every subcommand (start, stop, status, service, config, mcp)
• Desktop Tray — for the GUI version
• Docker — containerized headless
• Environment Variables — full env list