Agents targeting

Running a task on a single agent

The basic syntax for running a task is:

jack run <agent_name> <plugin:task> [arguments...]

Example:

jack run agent1 health:ping

agent1

→ output:
    true

Targeting methods overview

Jackadi provides several ways to target multiple agents:

1. Single agent targeting

Target a specific agent by name:

jack run -t agent1 example:task1

2. List-based targeting

Target multiple specific agents:

jack run -l "agent1,agent2,agent3" example:task1

3. Pattern-based targeting

Glob Patterns (default):

jack run -g "worker-*" example:task1
jack run "web-*" example:task1  # -g is default

Regular Expressions:

jack run -e "agent[0-9]+" example:task1
jack run -e "^(web|api)-server-[0-9]{2}$" example:task1

4. Query targeting

The most advanced targeting method using hostname and/or specs:

Exact match

The operator for an exact match is ==.

jack run -q "id==hostname1" example:task1

List of agents

The operator for a list is ==. The elements in the list are separated by a comma.

jack run -q "id==agent1,agent2" example:task1

Glob pattern

The operator for a glob pattern is =~.

jack run -q "id=~agent*" example:task1

Regex pattern

The operator for regex filtering is =~, followed by /your_regex/.

jack run -q "id=~/^agent.*$/" example:task1

Logical operators

You can combine multiple filters together using AND and OR.

The order of execution follows standard binary/mathematical logic: AND operations are processed before OR.

jack run -q "id==agent1 AND specs.dev.hardware.Vendor==Lenovo" example:task1
jack run -q "id==agent1 OR specs.dev.hardware.Type==Laptop" example:task1

Using nested spec

When the used spec is nested, like a map or a struct, you can access to a specific leaf using ..

jack run -q "specs.system.os.kernel.version=~'6.17.*'" kernel-specific:task

You can also access to an element of a list:

jack run -q "specs.system.network.interfaces[0].status==up" network:configure

4. Target from a file

You can import a list of target from a file (one agent per line).

agent1
agent2
agent3

jack run -f ./agents.txt cmd:run "pwd"