A managed service elected by a GUI client (the desktop app, an editor, a
login item) inherits launchd's environment: PATH is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
and nothing exported from .zshrc or .bashrc exists. Every process the server
spawns extends process.env, so stdio MCP servers using #!/usr/bin/env node,
npx, uvx, formatters, and hooks fail with "Connection closed" while the bash
tool, which prefers the client's terminal environment, keeps working.
Resolve the user's interactive login shell once at service startup when the
inherited environment did not come from a shell, and adopt it before anything
reads process.env.
Kit Langton
b171a295df