Resurrector

Never let your critical Windows applications stay dead.

Resurrector is a lightweight process monitoring and auto-restart tool for Windows.

It is designed to ensure that critical applications remain running within the Interactive Session (the desktop session where you are logged in), effortlessly resurrecting (restarting) them if they crash or terminate unexpectedly.

Features

• Strict Lifecycle Control: Resurrector completely owns the lifecycle of monitored apps. It spawns them as child processes bound to a Windows Job Object, guaranteeing that apps (and their subprocesses) cleanly terminate when stopped.
• Config-as-Code (SSoT): config.toml acts as the definitive Single Source of Truth. The core uses fsnotify to track changes in real-time and reconciles the system state automatically. Changes via the UI or external editors are applied instantly without restarting the core.
• Zero-Polling Monitoring: Event-driven monitoring using Windows API (WaitForSingleObject). It does not waste CPU resources.
• Minimal Footprint: The resident core process is written in pure Go and consumes only a few megabytes of memory.
• On-Demand Modern UI: The configuration and status UI (Wails + Svelte) only launches when called from the system tray. It exits and frees all memory when not needed.

For more technical details about the architecture, IPC, and reconciliation loop, please see Design & Architecture.

Configuration (config.toml)

Applications to be monitored are managed via a config.toml file located in %USERPROFILE%\.config\resurrector\config.toml. The file is automatically created with sample content when you launch the core application for the first time. You can also specify a custom configuration file path using the -f command-line argument.

[!WARNING] Because Resurrector watches this file for real-time changes using fsnotify, Atomic Writes are required if modified by external tools. Edit directly using a standard text editor, or if scripting writes, write to a .tmp file and perform an atomic rename/move.

# Resurrector Configuration

["PowerToys Awake"]
command = 'C:\Program Files\PowerToys\modules\Awake\PowerToys.Awake.exe'
args = ["--use-pt-config"]
cwd = 'C:\Program Files\PowerToys\modules\Awake'
enabled = true
hide_window = true
restart_delay_sec = 3
max_retries = 5
healthy_timeout_sec = 60

["My Svelte Dev Server"]
command = 'npm'
args = ["run", "dev"]
cwd = 'C:\Users\user\projects\my-svelte-app'
enabled = false

Item Definitions

• [name] (String): The identifier name displayed on the UI.
• command (String): The full path to the command or executable. (Mandatory)
• args (Array of Strings): List of arguments to pass to the command. (Default: [])
• cwd (String): The working directory (current directory) for running the command. (Default: The directory where the command is located)
• enabled (Boolean): If true, starts monitoring on startup or UI request. (Mandatory)
• hide_window (Boolean): If true, launches the process in the background (hidden window). (Default: false)
• restart_delay_sec (Integer): The wait time (seconds) before attempting a restart after detecting a process termination. (Default: 0)
• max_retries (Integer): The maximum number of restarts before stopping monitoring due to persistent crashes (crash loop prevention). (Default: 0 / Infinite retry)
• healthy_timeout_sec (Integer): If the process continues to run stably for this many seconds after a restart, the retry count is reset to 0. (Default: 0 / Infinite retry)

Build

To build the entire project, run the following commands in the root directory:

npm install
npm run build

The following files will be generated in the build/ directory:

• resurrector.exe (Core Process)
• resurrector-ui.exe (UI Process)

Usage

1. Run build/resurrector.exe.
2. An icon will appear in the system tray.
3. Right-click the icon and select "Settings" to launch the UI for configuring monitored applications.

Development

Prerequisites

• Go 1.26+
• Node.js 22+ (LTS recommended)
• Wails CLI (go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Daisuke (yet another) Maki