CipherSwarm Agent Monitoring & Configuration#

🧠 CipherSwarm — Agent Monitoring & Configuration Context#

🔍 General Goals#

• Agent monitoring and configuration will be significantly expanded in a future phase (likely Phase 5).
• Current users report confusion around whether agents are truly running or idle.
• All users (including non-admins) should be able to view agent status; only admins can modify agents or view detailed controls.

📋 Agent List View (Overview Table)#

Display all agents in a table with the following columns:

• Agent Name + OS
• Status
• Temperature (°C) — from most recent DeviceStatus
• Utilization — average of enabled devices
• Current Attempts/sec — most recent device guess rate
• Average Attempts/sec — average over the last minute
• Current Job — Show Project, Campaign, and Attack name
• Gear Icon Menu — Admin-only:
  • Options: Disable Agent, View Details

Relevant data sources: DeviceStatus, TaskStatus, and HashcatGuess from contracts/v1_api_swagger.json.

➕ Agent Registration Flow#

• Triggered via modal dialog.
• Requires:
  • Label (Agent name override)
  • Project toggles (which projects this agent can work on)
• After creation, show agent token to copy/paste.

🔎 Agent Detail View (Tabbed Interface)#

Admins only. Tabs:

⚙️ Settings#

• Agent Label:
  • Editable field. Sets custom_label.
  • Fallback to host_name if blank:
    display_name = agent.custom_label or agent.host_name
• Enabled:
  • Toggle. If disabled, the agent will not receive tasks.
• Agent Update Interval:
  • Seconds between agent check-ins. Should default to random 1-15s, currently 30s.
• Use Native Hashcat:
  • Toggle AdvancedAgentConfiguration.use_native_hashcat = true.
• Enable Additional Hash Types:
  • Toggle to run --benchmark-all instead of --benchmark.
• Project Assignment:
  • Multi-toggle list of allowed projects.
• System Info:
  • Read-only. Displays:
    • Operating System
    • Last seen IP
    • Client signature
    • Agent token

🖥️ Hardware#

• Computational Units (aka Backend Devices):
  • Pulled from --backend-info on agent check-in.
  • Until check-in: show placeholder + gray-out controls.
  • Stored as:
    • Descriptive names → Agent.devices (list of str)
    • Enabled devices → backend_device (comma-separated 1-indexed integers)
  • UI:
    • Each device has an enable/disable toggle.
    • If task is active:
      • Prompt with:
        1. Restart task immediately
        2. Apply change to next task
        3. Cancel change
• Hardware Acceleration Settings:
  • Temperature abort (--hwmon-temp-abort): Not yet implemented, suggest default to 90°C or capture as a note.
  • opencl_devices toggle: defines allowed OpenCL device types.
  • Backend support toggles:
    • --backend-ignore-cuda
    • --backend-ignore-opencl
    • --backend-ignore-hip
    • --backend-ignore-metal

All the above are part of AdvancedAgentConfiguration in contracts/v1_api_swagger.json.

📈 Performance#

• Line Chart (8h window):
  • Shows guess rate over time per device.
  • X-axis = time, Y-axis = hashes/sec.
  • Source: DeviceStatus.speed.
• Device Cards:
  • One per device.
  • Donut/circular chart for utilization.
  • Temperature text below.
    • If -1, show "Not Monitored".
• Updates in real-time from incoming TaskStatus.

🪵 Log#

• Displays agent error timeline.

• Use colored severity indicators for readability.

• Source: AgentError records, real-time updates.

• Fields:

  Copy

  id: Error ID
  message: Human-readable message
  severity: Level (info, warning, critical, etc.)
  error_code: Optional
  details: Optional JSON
  agent_id: FK
  task_id: Optional FK
  

🧠 Capabilities#

• Shows benchmark results (latest only).
• Used to determine which hash types the agent can handle.
• Source: app/models/hashcat_benchmark.rb

Benchmark model fields:

class HashcatBenchmark < ApplicationRecord
  # Columns:
  # id: integer
  # agent_id: integer (FK)
  # hash_type_id: integer (FK)
  # runtime: integer (ms)
  # hash_speed: float (h/s)
  # device: string
  # created_at: datetime
  # updated_at: datetime
end

• Top-level table:
  • Columns:
    • Toggle (to disable hash mode)
    • Hash ID
    • Name
    • Speed (e.g. 3.2 Gh/s)
    • Category (from current_hashcat_hashmodes.txt)
  • Rows = one per hash mode, across all devices
  • Expandable rows show per-device breakdown
  • Filterable by category
  • Searchable by name or hash ID
  • Caption: Last benchmark date
  • Header button: "Rebenchmark" (sets agent.state = pending)

Original notes#

For the original stream-of-consciousness notes on the agent stuff, see Agent Notes.