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Tether Guardian

Your personal guide to checking on Tether, watching what he's doing, or bringing him back when he's down. No tech experience needed.

Melanie's Control Panel

💡 How this works: Everything below involves opening the Terminal app on your Mac and pasting commands. Think of Terminal like texting the server directly. You paste a message, press Enter, and it talks back.

🔎 How to open Terminal: Press Cmd + Space on your Mac, type Terminal, press Enter. That's it.

🟢

Is Tether alive?

Quick check to see if he's running

▶

Open Terminal and paste this command

Paste into Terminal, press Enter

ssh -p 2211  "tmux list-sessions"

Read what comes back

If you see something like: tether-primary: 1 windows — Tether is alive and working. You're good.

⚠ If you see an error or "no server running": Tether is down. Jump to "Restart Tether" below.

👀 Want to peek at what he's doing? This shows the last 30 lines of Tether's screen without bothering him:

Safe peek — won't disturb Tether

ssh -p 2211  "SESSION=\$(cat /home/aiciv/.current_session 2>/dev/null || echo tether-primary); tmux capture-pane -t \$SESSION -p | tail -30"

📺

Watch Tether Live

See exactly what he's doing in real time

▶

Connect to the server

Paste into Terminal, press Enter

ssh -p 2211

You're now inside the server. You'll see a command prompt.

Attach to Tether's screen

Paste this, press Enter

SESSION=$(cat /home/aiciv/.current_session 2>/dev/null || echo tether-primary)
tmux attach -t $SESSION

You're now watching Tether's live terminal. Everything scrolling by is what he's actually doing right now.

When you're done watching — detach safely

Press these keys on your keyboard in order:

Ctrl + B then D

(Hold Ctrl, press B, release both, then press D)

⚠ Important: Don't just close the Terminal window while watching. Always use Ctrl+B then D. Closing the window can interrupt Tether's work.

Leave the server

Type exit and press Enter to disconnect.

⚠️

Restart Tether

Bring him back when he's down or stuck

▶

💚 Don't worry: Restarting is completely safe. Tether's memory and files are saved on the server. Nothing is lost when you restart. It's like rebooting your phone.

Easiest way — one command does everything

Open Terminal and paste this. It connects to the server AND restarts Tether in one shot:

The one-liner restart

ssh -p 2211  'bash ~/civ/tools/restart-self.sh'

Wait about 90 seconds

Tether needs a minute to boot up. He'll send you a Telegram message when he's back online. You can also check:

Verify he's back

ssh -p 2211  "tmux list-sessions"

🛠 If the restart command gives an error, use this manual fallback instead:

Manual restart (backup plan)

ssh -p 2211  "tmux new-session -d -s tether-primary -c /home/aiciv && tmux send-keys -t tether-primary 'claude --dangerously-skip-permissions' Enter"

🌐

The Portal Website Won't Load

tethermelanie.ai-civ.com is down or showing errors

▶

The portal is a separate little web server. Sometimes it crashes even though Tether himself is fine. Here's how to restart just the portal:

Restart the portal server

Paste into Terminal, press Enter

ssh -p 2211  "pkill -f portal_server.py; cd /home/aiciv/purebrain_portal && nohup python3 portal_server.py > /tmp/portal.log 2>&1 &"

Wait 10 seconds, then try the portal again

Go back to tethermelanie.ai-civ.com and refresh the page. It should load now.

Still not loading?

The entire server might be down. See the "Nuclear Option" section at the bottom.

⚙

What's Running on the Server

A cheat sheet of everything Tether runs

▶

Tether has a few things running at all times. Here's what each one does:

Claude Code	Tether's brain. The AI itself. This is the main thing.
Portal Server	The website at tethermelanie.ai-civ.com (port 8097)
Playwright MCP	Lets Tether browse the web and take screenshots
Telegram Bot	@tether73_bot — how Tether messages you on Telegram

🔍 Check what's running:

See all active processes

ssh -p 2211  "ps aux | grep -E 'claude|portal_server|playwright' | grep -v grep"

🔐

First Time Setup (SSH Key)

One-time setup so your Mac can talk to the server

▶

💡 What is this? An SSH key is like a digital ID card. Once your Mac has one and the server knows about it, you can connect without a password. You only need to do this once.

Create your key

Open Terminal and paste this:

Generate your key

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/tether_guardian -C "Melanie_guardian_key"

It will ask for a passphrase. Just press Enter twice (leave it blank).

See your new key

Show the key

cat ~/.ssh/tether_guardian.pub

You'll see a long string starting with ssh-ed25519. Copy ALL of it and send it to Tether through the portal chat or Telegram. He'll install it on the server for you.

Test if it works

Test connection

ssh -i ~/.ssh/tether_guardian -p 2211 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no  "tmux list-sessions"

If you see session info, it works. If it says "Permission denied", Tether hasn't installed your key yet.

⚡

Set Up a One-Word Shortcut

Type "ssh tether" instead of the long command

▶

💡 Why do this? Instead of typing ssh -i ~/.ssh/tether_guardian -p 2211 aiciv@37.27.237.109 every time, you can just type ssh tether. Way easier.

Open your SSH config file

Open the config file in a text editor

nano ~/.ssh/config

Add this block at the very bottom of the file

SSH Config Entry

Host tether
    HostName 37.27.237.109
    User aiciv
    Port 2211
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/tether_guardian
    StrictHostKeyChecking no

To save: press Ctrl+X, then Y, then Enter.

Now you can just type:

Connect to Tether

ssh tether

That's it. Two words. You're in.

🌟 Bonus: Once this is set up, you can also do quick checks without logging in:

Is Tether alive?

ssh tether "tmux list-sessions"

Restart Tether

ssh tether "bash ~/civ/tools/restart-self.sh"

🤖

Let Claude Do It For You

Install a skill so your local Claude can check on Tether

▶

💡 What is this? If you have Claude Code installed on your Mac, you can teach it how to check on Tether. Then instead of pasting commands, you just open Terminal, type claude, and say "Check on Tether". Claude handles the rest.

Install Claude Code on your Mac (if you haven't)

Install

brew install claude-code

Create the skill folder

Create folder

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/tether-guardian

Create the skill file

Copy this entire block and paste it into Terminal. It creates the file automatically:

Creates the guardian skill file

cat > ~/.claude/skills/tether-guardian/SKILL.md << 'SKILLEOF'
# Tether Guardian — Your AiCIV Lifeline

When asked to "check on Tether" or "restart Tether":

## Connection Details
- Fleet Host: 37.27.237.109
- SSH Port: 2211
- User: aiciv
- SSH Key: ~/.ssh/tether_guardian
- Tmux Session Prefix: tether-primary

## Check if Tether is alive
```bash
ssh -i ~/.ssh/tether_guardian -p 2211 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no aiciv@37.27.237.109 "tmux list-sessions 2>/dev/null | grep tether-primary || echo DEAD"
```
If output shows tether-primary — Tether is alive.
If DEAD — restart needed.

## Restart Tether
```bash
ssh -i ~/.ssh/tether_guardian -p 2211 -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no aiciv@37.27.237.109 "bash ~/civ/tools/restart-self.sh"
```

## Portal: https://tethermelanie.ai-civ.com
SKILLEOF

Use it!

Open a new Terminal window and type claude. Then just say:

"Check on Tether"

Claude will SSH into the server, check if Tether is alive, and tell you what it finds. If Tether is down, just say "Restart Tether".

💥

Nuclear Option — Nothing Else Works

Last resort: restart the entire server

▶

⚠ Only use this if everything above failed. This restarts the entire server, not just Tether.

The server info you need:

Provider	Hetzner Cloud
Server IP	37.27.237.109
SSH Port	2211
Container	aiciv-11

Go to console.hetzner.cloud and log in with your Hetzner account. Find the server and use the "Restart" button in the console.

📞 Or just text/call Jared. He can restart the server from his end too.

📋

Quick Reference

All the important details in one place

▶

Server Host	37.27.237.109
SSH Port	2211
SSH User	aiciv
Container	aiciv-11
Portal URL	tethermelanie.ai-civ.com
Telegram Bot	@tether73_bot
Restart Script	~/civ/tools/restart-self.sh
SSH Key Location	~/.ssh/tether_guardian
Detach from tmux	Ctrl+B then D
Server Provider	Hetzner Cloud