Change the default "wait" state for if you run the empty frontend when there's already an available deploy waiting. You almost certainly want to start running it right away. Example: mgmt etcd mgmt run --hostname h1 --no-server --tmp-prefix --seeds=http://127.0.0.1:2379 empty mgmt run --hostname h2 --no-server --tmp-prefix --seeds=http://127.0.0.1:2379 empty mgmt deploy --no-git --seeds=http://127.0.0.1:2379 lang examples/lang/hello0.mcl mgmt run --hostname h3 --no-server --tmp-prefix --seeds=http://127.0.0.1:2379 empty In fact, you don't even need to start up etcd first for this to all work.