Health and Readiness

A Demos node exposes plain HTTP GET endpoints on its RPC port for operational monitoring. These are unauthenticated, return JSON, and are designed to be polled by load balancers, Kubernetes liveness/readiness probes, and uptime checks. The contract is additive: existing fields are preserved across releases so probes do not break.

`GET /health`

The primary health endpoint. It aggregates the subsystem registry, the boot tracker, the main-loop heartbeat, and process-level error counters into a single snapshot.

Status semantics

The top-level status field collapses everything into one of four values, with the following precedence (failing wins, then dormant, degraded, ok):

`status`	Meaning	HTTP code
`ok`	All subsystems healthy, main loop alive.	`200`
`degraded`	At least one non-critical subsystem is `failed`, but the chain and main loop are alive.	`200`
`dormant`	The node booted with an empty peer list and intentionally skipped signaling/MCP/TLSNotary/main loop.	`200`
`failing`	The mempool/DB is unreachable, the `chain` subsystem failed, or the main loop died (and the node is not dormant).	`503`

Only failing returns HTTP 503. dormant and degraded are intentional states and return 200, so a probe keyed solely on HTTP status will not flap on a node that legitimately has no peers yet.

Headers

X-Demos-Dormant: true — added only when status is dormant. Lets an LB route around a node that is up but not yet participating in consensus.

Response fields

Field	Type	Notes
`version` / `version_name`	string	Node version and codename.
`accepting`	boolean	True when the node is synced and not currently in its sync loop.
`mempool_size`	number \| null	Pending transaction count. `null` when `Mempool.count()` fails (forces `status: failing`).
`uptime_s`	number	Seconds since process start.
`status`	string	`ok` \| `degraded` \| `dormant` \| `failing`.
`dormant`	boolean	Raw dormant-mode flag.
`boot`	object	Boot-step roll-up: `complete`, `steps_total`, `steps_ready`, `steps_failed`, `steps_skipped`, `current` (name of the running step, or `null`).
`subsystems`	object	Per-subsystem snapshot (see below).
`ports`	object	Per-subsystem `{ requested, actual, drifted }`. `drifted` is true when the bound port differs from the requested one. Only subsystems with a known port appear.
`main_loop`	object	`heartbeat_age_s` (seconds since last tick, or `null`), `iterations_total`, `exited`, `exit_reason`.
`errors`	object	`uncaught_total`, `unhandled_rejection_total`, `last_uncaught`.

Each entry under subsystems is keyed by name (one of chain, rpc, metrics, signaling, mcp, tlsnotary, omni, dtr, l2ps, main_loop) and carries: status (pending | running | ready | failed | skipped | dormant), since (ms timestamp of the last transition or null), port, requestedPort, lastError, enabled, and optional extra.

Sample response

{
  "version": "1.4.2",
  "version_name": "mycelium",
  "accepting": true,
  "mempool_size": 12,
  "uptime_s": 8421,
  "status": "ok",
  "dormant": false,
  "boot": {
    "complete": true,
    "steps_total": 9,
    "steps_ready": 8,
    "steps_failed": 0,
    "steps_skipped": 1,
    "current": null
  },
  "subsystems": {
    "chain": { "status": "ready", "since": 1716800000000, "port": null, "requestedPort": null, "lastError": null, "enabled": true },
    "rpc": { "status": "ready", "since": 1716800000100, "port": 53550, "requestedPort": 53550, "lastError": null, "enabled": true },
    "metrics": { "status": "ready", "since": 1716800000200, "port": 9090, "requestedPort": 9090, "lastError": null, "enabled": true },
    "mcp": { "status": "skipped", "since": 1716800000300, "port": null, "requestedPort": null, "lastError": null, "enabled": false, "extra": { "reason": "MCP disabled" } },
    "main_loop": { "status": "ready", "since": 1716800001000, "port": null, "requestedPort": null, "lastError": null, "enabled": true }
  },
  "ports": {
    "rpc": { "requested": 53550, "actual": 53550, "drifted": false },
    "metrics": { "requested": 9090, "actual": 9090, "drifted": false }
  },
  "main_loop": {
    "heartbeat_age_s": 1,
    "iterations_total": 5821,
    "exited": false,
    "exit_reason": null
  },
  "errors": {
    "uncaught_total": 0,
    "unhandled_rejection_total": 0,
    "last_uncaught": null
  }
}

Probe configuration

A liveness probe should treat any HTTP 503 (i.e. status: failing) as unhealthy. A readiness probe wanting to gate traffic until consensus participation can additionally inspect dormant / the X-Demos-Dormant header or require boot.complete === true.

`GET /health/subsystems`

A slim sibling for ops dashboards that only need subsystem state. It returns the same subsystems snapshot plus the dormant flag, with a smaller body and no status roll-up:

{
  "dormant": false,
  "subsystems": { "chain": { "status": "ready", "since": 1716800000000 } }
}

`GET /info`

Returns identity and peering metadata rather than health. Useful for service-discovery and confirming which node answered:

{
  "version": "1.4.2",
  "version_name": "mycelium",
  "identity": "0x<public-key-hex>",
  "connectionString": "http://node.example:53550",
  "peerlist": []
}

Internal Mechanisms

Validator Lifecycle

Network Governance

Global Change Registry

Consensus Mechanism

Network Forks

L2PS Privacy Subnets

ZK Identity

Architecture

Communications Stack

API Reference

Operations

Incentives

MCP Server

Bridges

Developers Testbed

Miscellaneous

Health and Readiness

Health and Readiness

`GET /health`

Status semantics

Headers

Response fields

Sample response

Probe configuration

`GET /health/subsystems`

`GET /info`

​Health and Readiness

​GET /health

​Status semantics

​Headers

​Response fields

​Sample response

​Probe configuration

​GET /health/subsystems

​GET /info

Health and Readiness

`GET /health`

Status semantics

Headers

Response fields

Sample response

Probe configuration

`GET /health/subsystems`

`GET /info`