Forked electron process requires "empty" electron - node.js

I'm building a command line interface in node which connects to a background command line daemon. If no daemon is running, the first time the cli is called it will fork off the daemon using child_process.fork
The daemon needs to launch instances of electron BrowserWindow, but requiring electron is showing unusual behavior.
If running the daemon on it's own in the foreground, everything works smoothly; however in the background I get an empty module when requiring electron.
Printing Object.keys(require('electron')) to console shows the number sequence 0..84, and printing the results of require('electron') shows the string /path/to/electron/dist/electron
Printing out process.argv shows that the forked script is definitely being executed with electron.
I'm stumped. Any direction would be greatly appreciated.
Example:
launcher
#!/usr/local/bin/electron
const cp = require('child_process');
console.log();
const cld = cp.fork(__dirname+'/daemon',{
stdio:['inherit','inherit','inherit','ipc']
});
cld.on('message', (code) => {
code = parseInt(code);
cld.disconnect();
process.exit(code);
});
daemon
#!/usr/local/bin/electron
const fs=require('fs');
const log = (x)=>fs.appendFileSync('log',x+'\n\n');
log('');
if(!process.send) process.send = console.log;
log(process.argv);
const e = require('electron');
log(e);
log(Object.keys(e));
log(e.app);
process.send(0);
Resulting log file
*removed*/lib/thirdparty/node_modules/electron/dist/electron,*removed*/tmp/daemon
*removed*/lib/thirdparty/node_modules/electron/dist/electron
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84
undefined
Log file from running just daemon
*removed*/lib/thirdparty/node_modules/electron/dist/electron,./daemon
[object Object]
clipboard,nativeImage,shell,app,autoUpdater,BrowserView,BrowserWindow,contentTracing,crashReporter,dialog,globalShortcut,ipcMain,inAppPurchase,Menu,MenuItem,net,netLog,Notification,powerMonitor,powerSaveBlocker,protocol,screen,session,systemPreferences,TopLevelWindow,TouchBar,Tray,View,webContents,WebContentsView
[object App]


forked process by default set ELECTRON_RUN_AS_NODE=1 and will not expose any electron specific modules:
as https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/6656 says, you may need workaround by explicitly invoke process separately vice versa.

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Normally, the Shopify CLI prints something like "Finished Upload" as soon as the changed file has been pushed. It works perfectly fine for the first time but after that, nothing is printed to the terminal anymore.
Here is a minimal representation of what my current setup looks like:
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It turns out that I can achieve this but just making the child process inherit the stdio. ex:-
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NodeJS child process stdout not returning completly

I'm running the following code using node and I always get only about 80% of what stdout is supposed to return when the file is past 12ko or so. If the file is 240ko it will still output 80% of it. If it's under 12 it will output completely.
When I open a cmd and run the command manually I always get the full output.
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);
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process.stdout.on('data', function (msg) {
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NodeJS: exit parent, leave child alive

i am writing an utility. One command of this utility is to run an external application.
var child_process = require('child_process');
var fs = require('fs');
var out = fs.openSync('.../../log/out.log', 'a');
var err = fs.openSync('.../../log/err.log', 'a');
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Currently:
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You know what i mean ^^?

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