--- title: "Stop a background command" method: DELETE path: "/computers/{id}/exec/{pid}" tags: ["Control"] --- # Stop a background command `DELETE /computers/{id}/exec/{pid}` ## Request - Base URL: `https://app.mandala.computer/api/v1` - URL: `https://app.mandala.computer/api/v1/computers/{id}/exec/{pid}` - Auth: HTTP bearer Stops a backgrounded command and answers the handle as it was when it stopped, with whatever it had printed and not yet been read. The signal goes to the PROCESS GROUP, so a command that started children takes them with it: `TERM` first, then `KILL` if it is still there when the grace period ends. `killed` on the answer means this call did the stopping — including when the command had in fact already ended and nothing had noticed yet, so do not read it as "your command was cut short". See the field. A handle answers `404` from ten minutes after its command exits, and after the daemon on the computer’s host restarts — the same `404` as a pid that never existed. A stopped or suspended computer answers `409` with `reason: "unavailable"`, and this route does not resume it. A suspended one still holds the command: after a resume, its output and exit code can be read again. Only commands this API started can be stopped this way, and a `{pid}` that is not a number is a `400` rather than a 404. Requires the `member` role or higher. ## Path parameters - `id` string, required - `pid` string, required ## Response `200` The handle as it was when the command was stopped. - ExecStatus - `execution_id` string, required: The stable ID originally returned by background exec. - `pid` integer, required - `command` string, required: The command line, echoed back. - `running` boolean, required - `exited` boolean, required - `exit_code` integer: Absent until it has exited — absent rather than `0`, which is the one value worth trusting. - `stdout_b64` string, required: What it has printed since your previous read, base64. This read consumes it. Always base64, on every response, for the reason `Exec` gives — and here there is a second one. A poll stops at a 1 MiB ceiling, and that cut lands on a byte offset: a multi-byte character sitting across it would have had BOTH of its halves replaced. Ordinary text output was being corrupted at every megabyte, not only binary output. Decoded, the two halves join back into the character they came from. - `stderr_b64` string, required - `stdout_offset` integer, required: How far the daemon has now read. Reported, not a parameter — see the note above. - `stderr_offset` integer, required - `more` boolean: There is further output waiting right now. This is the flag to poll on. ABSENT rather than `false` when there is not, so `false` is a value this field never carries: code waiting for `more === false` waits for ever. Polling is safe either way — `!more` reads the same for absent and false — and no schema here marks it required, so an ordinary client simply sees `undefined`. What it is not safe to do is declare it a required boolean and put a strict runtime validator behind that, which rejects the ordinary response rather than the unusual one. - `killed` boolean: A `DELETE /computers/{id}/exec/{pid}` reached this command while the platform still had it running. Absent rather than `false` otherwise, on the same terms as `more`. That is weaker than “it did not finish on its own”, and the difference is a real one rather than a caution. Whether a command has exited is noticed by a poll, so a command that ended a moment before your DELETE arrived is still running as far as this platform knows: the stop is carried out against a process group that has already gone, which succeeds, and the flag is set. So `killed` tells you what YOU did, not how the command ended. `exit_code` is what says that, and a command stopped by a signal reports the code its shell gives for one. - `started_at` string, required: RFC 3339 timestamp. ## Other responses - `400`: The request was malformed — a bad resolution string, a missing `command`, a `{pid}` or `{window}` that is not one. It is also what a well-formed request gets when the thing it names cannot be acted on and never will be — a restore onto a computer that is gone, for instance. Either way it is final: the message says what is wrong, and sending it again unchanged answers the same. That is the whole difference from a `503`, which means ask again shortly. - `401`: Platform authentication required or refused: reason is missing, invalid, or revoked, with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer (invalid_token for invalid/revoked). - `403`: The credential is recognized but its holder lacks the required role or membership, or the holder/account is suspended, or the holder has not verified their email address. An ordinary denial for too low a role may carry no `reason`. The email one carries none either, and its message begins `Verify your email before`: it answers a create, a clone of a computer or a snapshot, a new API key and a new SSH key, and is cleared by verifying the address in the dashboard. `reason: "revoked"` marks authority that is gone: a suspended account or a lost membership (refused as the request arrives, or if it happens while the request is in flight), or a role that was lowered while the request was in flight. The message identifies the refusal; replacing a valid key alone does not restore authority, and sending the same call again does not help. - `404`: No such resource in your scope — a computer, snapshot, secret, webhook, SSH key, API key, workspace, operation and so on — or no such endpoint; a confirmed missing guest file is no such file in the guest. - `405`: This public path exists but does not accept that method. Allow lists only its public methods, with HEAD for GET and metadata OPTIONS. - `409`: Refused for the state something is in — resizing a computer that is running, running a command on one that is stopped, taking a snapshot while another capture of it is running. WHETHER RETRYING HELPS IS IN THE BODY, NOT THE STATUS, and this is the one thing to take from this entry. Some of these describe a state that is passing: a guest agent still inside its boot window, a guest agent busy with another call, a move already running on the account. Those clear on their own and the same request works a moment later. The rest describe a DECISION about the request you sent — the size does not fit, the computer is the wrong one for this, the saved session cannot travel — and no amount of retrying turns one of those into a yes. A client that treats 409 as uniformly transient loops forever on half of them. Where the platform can say which it is, it sends `reason` beside `error` — one word, meant to be switched on rather than read: `contention` and `starting` clear on their own, `unavailable` means the computer is not running and only starting it helps, `running` means the computer is running and only stopping it helps (a resize), `unsupported` means waiting will not change the answer — this computer cannot do it at all, or it needs another step first, which the message names (a stop, or removing its secret bindings, for example) — `exists` means a create-only upload found its path taken, `name_taken` means a secret of that name is already in that scope, `stale_revision` means a secret changed since the `revision_id` you sent was read (or a computer’s bound list since the `version` you sent), and `stale_capture` means the screenshot capture you named is no longer held: a newer one replaced it, or its host’s daemon restarted or the computer moved. `starting` covers the two minutes after a start or a restart, and after a reboot from inside the guest on a computer last cold-started recently enough to report one (a stop and a start gives an older one that); a guest agent that is still silent after that is a `502`. Match on that and never on the sentence, which is prose and is rewritten. **Absent means no classification was given** — treat it, and any word you do not recognise, as no answer, because not every refusal here has one yet. It is what the guest routes answer: the clipboard on a stopped computer used to be a 409 indistinguishable from a clipboard whose selection was claimed for an instant, and a blanket retry loop spun against the first until its deadline. Every 409 that clears on its own carries `contention` or `starting`: a host busy with another build or with no room for one, an operation already running on the same computer or snapshot (a capture, a copy, a delete, a restore or clone reading it, another agent run), a lock another request holds, a move or a delivery settling. So a 409 with no word, or with any other word, is not one that waiting fixes: read the sentence for the step it names. The ones worth knowing by name, because each has a next step that is not "wait": A resize past what the computer’s host can run carries `move`, an object rather than a message: `{"required":true,"possible":true}` means another host in this region could run it and the computer has to be moved there first — `POST /computers/{id}/move` with the same sizing fields is how you agree to that, and it is a separate call because relocating a computer is not something a resize should do to you quietly. `possible:false` means nowhere in the region can, and the size is the thing to change. The move itself then refuses for the things it re-decides at the moment it runs, and only one of those is worth waiting on: a computer that is running or suspended has to be stopped or resumed-and-stopped by you, a size that fits where it already is wants an ordinary resize instead, and a region with nowhere to put it wants a smaller size. `Another computer on this account is being moved right now` is the one that clears by itself, and it carries `reason: "contention"` — one move runs per account, and `GET /moves` says which. And the terminal socket refuses twice over: `reason: "unavailable"` with `resume_required: true` on a suspended computer, which clears when you start it and not before, and `reason: "unsupported"` on a running computer whose hardware carries no terminal channel — one last started before interactive terminals existed — which needs a stop and a start. Not a restart, which resets the same machine, and not a retry, which never comes good. - `429`: You are asking faster than your plan allows. `Retry-After` says how many seconds to wait, and every metered response — anything past authentication and the re-check that your credential’s authority still holds — carries `RateLimit-Remaining`, so you do not have to be refused to find out. A `401`, a `403` from that re-check, an `OPTIONS` answer and an unexpected `500` carry none. The budget is spent in proportion to what a call costs rather than per request. What a call costs, in budget units, by kind (each operation’s exact figure is its `x-rate-cost` in the OpenAPI document): 1 to read one thing; 5 for a listing that spans the fleet, and 5 for a call into a running guest such as a screenshot or an exec; 10 for a power change and 10 to move file bytes; 25 for `GET /usage`, `GET /credits`, creating a public URL, and creating, rotating or testing a webhook; 50 to capture a snapshot; 100 to create, clone or restore a computer, and 100 to start an agent run, whose actions are then charged as they happen. The account-wide budget, as what an idle caller may spend at once and what refills each minute: No plan 1200 at once and 1200 a minute; Solo 4800 at once and 4800 a minute; Studio 12000 at once and 12000 a minute; Swarm 21600 at once and 21600 a minute. A single API key gets half of either. A `401` for a missing or unusable credential costs nothing: it is refused before anything is metered. A few refusals at the door cost one unit: a `403` because the role is too low or the route refuses an API key confined to a workspace, a `404` for a path that matches nothing, a `405`, and an `Idempotency-Key` answered from its stored result or still in progress. Everything else is charged in full when it is admitted, before it is carried out, so a refusal after that has spent the whole cost: a `400`, `402` or `409` from the route, a `403` its handler sends (on most routes, a suspended account included), and a model provider’s `401` on an agent run. The budget belongs to the account and is shared across everything on it, and any single API key may spend at most half of it. `RateLimit-Limit` is whichever of those two is binding on the request that carried it — usually the per-key half, and the account-wide figure when other keys have already spent more of it than this one has. All three `RateLimit-*` headers describe the same one, so `limit` minus `remaining` is what has been spent against it. A few `429`s are not about this budget, say so in their message, and can carry no `Retry-After`: a model provider’s rate limit relayed on an agent run. The cap on forks of one snapshot waiting for their secrets sends its own bounded expiry-based `Retry-After` with `reason: "contention"` (see `POST /snapshots/{id}/clone`). - `500`: The application could not finish this: an unexpected exception, a build that broke, or a storage fault. Application refusals carry the request correlation ID; unexpected internal details are not returned. - `502`: The agent inside the guest is not answering, or it rejected or malformed the private command protocol for this feature. The computer is up; the upstream agent interaction failed. This is not malformed caller input and carries no retry classification. - `503`: Something this depends on — a hypervisor, a store, or a host’s capacity — could not answer or take this right now. A read can be retried shortly. A change answered `503` may or may not have happened — a failure after the request was sent is answered the same way, with or without a warning in the message — so read the current state before retrying anything that is not safe to repeat, such as a create or a command. On the collection reads, `allow_partial=1` accepts a knowingly short answer instead. --- [API](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc.dev/mandala/apis/mandala-computer-api/revisions/2afbb87fa703?raw)