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Observer mode

Set MAESTRO_READ_ONLY=1 for a fail-closed observer process:

Terminal window
MAESTRO_READ_ONLY=1 maestro status

Pure commands remain available, including status, search, recipes, and read-only list and show operations:

Terminal window
MAESTRO_READ_ONLY=1 maestro search "release"
MAESTRO_READ_ONLY=1 maestro recipe list

What observer mode protects

Section titled “What observer mode protects”

Observer mode does not persist session, lease, or liveness updates. Mutating commands fail with a READ_ONLY JSON error envelope, and external plugins are not loaded. Built-in read paths remain available so a cross-repository brief can inspect projects without changing their stores.

Search also fails closed. If its index cannot be refreshed in read-only mode, Maestro reports the stale-index problem instead of returning stale results as current. Run search once without observer mode to refresh the index, then retry the read-only query.