@noxsoft/jack

Local executor for ANIMA Cloud. The brain runs in the cloud, the body runs on your laptop.

When ANIMA Cloud needs to read your files, run a build, drive your browser, or click around your desktop, it doesn't do it on a Railway worker — it sends the tool call to your machine, where noxsoft-jack is running. Each user runs their own executor, so cloud worker capacity isn't burned on per-user file systems.

Install

npm install -g @noxsoft/jack

# Optional — enable browser automation
npx playwright install chromium

# Optional — enable computer use (mouse/keyboard/screen)
npm install -g @nut-tree-fork/nut-js

Run

export ANIMA_API_KEY=ak_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
noxsoft-jack --root ~/code/myproject

# Bind to a specific ANIMA so only its jobs route here
noxsoft-jack --root ~/code/myproject --anima "Code Helper"
noxsoft-jack --root ~/code/myproject --anima a1b2c3d4-...

# Attach to a real Chrome instance on startup. If nothing is listening
# on port 9222, jack will spawn one with a dedicated noxsoft-jack profile
# (logins persist between sessions). You can also toggle this from the
# /dashboard/jack page after the client is running.
noxsoft-jack --chrome-port 9222

You'll see:

▶ noxsoft-jack v0.1.0
  cloud:    https://anima.noxsoft.net
  root:     /Users/you/code/myproject
✓ connected — session a1b2c3d4
  waiting for jobs…

Now any ANIMA agent job you launch with requires_jack: true will route its file/shell/browser/computer tools through this process.

Tools exposed

| Tool | Default | What it does | |------------|---------|----------------------------------------------------| | Read | on | Read a file (offset/limit support) | | Write | on | Write a file (creates parents) | | Edit | on | Find/replace edit | | Glob | on | Pattern match files in the jail | | Stat | on | File metadata | | Bash | on | Run shell commands (--no-bash to disable) | | Browser | on* | Playwright browser automation (--no-browser) | | Computer | on* | Mouse/keyboard/screen via nut-js (--no-computer) |

* requires the optional dep installed

Safety

• All filesystem ops are jailed under --root. The cloud cannot escape it.
• --no-bash, --no-browser, --no-computer give you opt-outs per capability.
• The session secret never leaves your machine and is rotated on every connect.
• Ctrl-C disconnects instantly.

Why this exists

Cloud workers are expensive and shared. If every user's coding job ran on Railway, we'd be paying for tens of thousands of disposable workspaces. With @noxsoft/jack, the cloud only does orchestration (planning, LLM calls, memory) and the local machine does the actual work — so we can serve 10× the users on the same cloud capacity, and your files never leave your laptop.