notifier-agent

What is notifier-agent and what is it for?

notifier-agent is a small program that runs beside a Holochain app and sends out the app's messages for it, so notifications reach people even when nobody has the app open. It exists so that apps built on Holochain can keep their people informed through ordinary channels such as text, chat and email.

notifier-agent is a small program that runs alongside a Holochain app. Its package manifest describes it plainly as a way to run any app as a notifier agent: instead of a person watching the app's interface, a long-running process watches it on their behalf and sends messages out. It is published in the holochain-open-dev organisation on GitHub and is written in JavaScript.

The idea comes from how these apps are built: the app and its interface live on the same device, so nothing reaches someone whose window is closed or whose machine is asleep. A notifier agent is a separate process that stays connected to the app's local conductor and reacts to the signals the app emits. When something needs to reach a person, it looks up the contact details already saved for them and sends the message through an ordinary messaging or email provider.

The code in the repository shows one concrete example. When the app's notifications zome emits a signal addressed to a notifier service destination, the process finds that agent's contacts and sends the message by SMS, WhatsApp or email, and it can hold a message until a chosen time using a scheduling library. The repository's own npm scripts describe starting it with Node or keeping it running in the background under pm2. The repository is the place to learn more.

From 4 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.