Reticle Docs: verification for AI coding agents

reticle restart is reticle kill followed by a daemon start that waits for a real bind.

npx reticle restart [--port N] [--force]

Flags

Flag	Type	Default	What it does
`--port N`	number	`4400` (or `RETICLE_PORT`, or the port in `.reticle.json`)	Which port to restart on
`--force`	boolean	`false`	Passed to the kill half: clear a listener that is not a Reticle daemon

The two halves are reported separately

A restart that killed the old daemon and then could not start a new one leaves you somewhere quite different from one that could not kill anything at all, and a single ok: false cannot tell you which happened. So each half prints its own line. Real capture, restarting over a running daemon:

{"event":"reticle_killed","port":4499,"pid":84513,"escalated":false,"listenerIdentified":true,"note":"only the listener was signalled. Any `reticle mcp` proxy on this port holds a client connection, not the port, and was left alone — it goes dormant and starts a fresh daemon on the next tool call."}
{"event":"reticle_daemon_spawned","port":4499}

Real capture, when the port is held by something that is not ours:

{"event":"reticle_kill_refused","port":4498,"reason":"pid 84537 (\"Python\") is listening, and it is not a Reticle daemon — it never answered /status and it is not the pid Reticle recorded. Killing it would be killing someone else's process. Run it again with --force if that is what you meant, or start Reticle on another port.","holder":"Python"}
{"event":"reticle_restart_aborted","port":4498,"reason":"the port was not freed, so nothing was started — the old holder is still there"}

The start half is serve’s, which waits for the daemon to answer before claiming it started and exits non-zero when it does not. A restart never reports success for a daemon that never bound.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
`0`	The port was freed and a daemon is answering on it
`1`	The port was not freed, or the new daemon did not come up

Worked example

npx reticle restart         # after an upgrade, so the new version is the one serving
npx reticle status

Why not lsof

The pipeline everyone reaches for kills the agent’s own MCP proxy along with the daemon.

Last modified on August 14, 2026

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reticle restart

Flags

The two halves are reported separately

Exit codes

Worked example

Why not lsof

​Flags

​The two halves are reported separately

​Exit codes

​Worked example

Why not lsof

Flags

The two halves are reported separately

Exit codes

Worked example