Introduction

Varta is a zero-dependency, zero-allocation health protocol designed for distributed local agents and networked clusters.

The Problem: “The Observer Gap”

In high-performance or safety-critical systems, monitoring process health is often surprisingly expensive or dangerously imprecise.

• Expensive: Monitoring agents that consume 5-10% CPU just to check if others are alive.
• Imprecise: TCP-based health checks that fail due to network congestion, not process failure.
• Fragile: Monitoring systems that crash when the target process panics or deadlocks.

The Varta Philosophy: “Zero-Everything”

Varta was built to bridge this gap by providing a protocol that is:

• Zero Dependencies: Production crates have empty [dependencies] sections.
• Zero Allocations: After initialization, the beat path never touches the heap.
• Zero Block: The agent never waits for the observer. If the observer is busy, the heartbeat is simply dropped.

How it Works

1. Agents emit a 32-byte fixed-layout frame (VLP) over a Unix Domain Socket or UDP.
2. The Observer (varta-watch) polls these frames, tracks per-pid state machines, and triggers recovery actions if a “stall” is detected.

Ready to get started? Check out the Installation guide.