awbac

Docs · Source · pip install awbac · The Aither World

The Aither World is an operating system for agents — a Linux you can hand to one, the runtimes it works in, and the tools it works with. awnix is the Linux underneath it; awbac is one of its 33 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account.

Start here: Gate one endpoint and read the explanation it gives for a denial.

Role-based access control that fails closed and explains itself.

pip install awbac

from awbac import Policy

p = (Policy()
     .role("reader", ["doc:read:*"])
     .role("editor", ["doc:write:*"], inherits=["reader"])
     .assign("david", "editor"))

d = p.check("david", "doc:read:handbook")
if d:
    ...
print(d.reason)     # granted by 'doc:read:*'

awbac check   policy.json david doc:read:handbook   # 0 allow · 1 deny · 2 could not judge
awbac explain policy.json david doc:write:secret
# DENY: none of 2 grant(s) cover 'doc:write:secret'

The bug this package is shaped around

Permissions are colon-separated: workspace:read:*. The obvious matcher is granted.startswith(requested), and it fails open:

"workspace:readwrite".startswith("workspace:read")   # True

A grant of workspace:read silently covers workspace:readwrite. Nothing raises, no happy-path test notices, and it stays invisible until someone writes to something they could only read.

So matching is on segments, never characters. * matches exactly one segment; ** matches one or more trailing segments and is refused anywhere but last, because a mid-position ** reads as a typo far more often than as intent.

granted	requested	result
workspace:read	workspace:readwrite	deny
doc:read:*	doc:read:handbook	allow
doc:*	doc:read:handbook	deny — * is one segment
doc:**	doc:read:handbook	allow
doc:read	doc:read:handbook	deny — grant is narrower

Fails closed on every path

Unknown role, unknown subject, anonymous caller, empty permission, malformed policy, inheritance cycle, an exception mid-evaluation — every one denies, with the cause named:

• an unknown role contributes nothing, not everything
• an inheritance cycle resolves what it can rather than raising (one bad role must not take down all authorization) or looping forever
• an exception returns a denial that says so, instead of propagating to a caller who might treat a raise as an allow
• an unreadable policy file exits 2, not 1 — "denied" is routine and would be shrugged off, so a missing policy has to look different from a refused request

Every decision carries a reason

A deny nobody can explain gets worked around. An allow nobody can attribute cannot be audited. So Decision carries reason, and an allow also carries via — the exact grant that permitted it.

Tests

15 tests, and they run in both directions: a suite that only asserts denials passes on a policy that denies everything, and one that only asserts allows passes on a policy that allows everything. There is a test whose whole job is to fail if the policy were replaced by a deny-all.

pip install -e ".[dev]" && pytest

Where it sits

package	question
awiam	who is this caller?
awbac	may this subject do X to Y?
awseal	what proves it?

Deliberately three packages. An identity service that also owns authorization has nobody to check it, and one that owns its own key material has nobody to attest it.

Apache-2.0.

The aw family

Standalone tools that share one idea: replace something you would otherwise have to trust with something you can check.

Each installs on its own, works offline, and needs no account.

	instead of trusting	you check
awdk	a framework's idea of how your agents should run	one loop you can read, pointed at a backend you already pay for
awskills	that an agent knows your procedure	the procedure written down, versioned, and loadable by any agent
awm	that memory stayed in its lane	tenant:user:project scopes, so a write cannot cross a boundary
awnode	a vendor's cloud with every prompt	a local gateway routing to backends you chose
awgraph	that grep found everything	an AST + tree-sitter call graph an agent can traverse
awgit	that no one else is editing this file	a lease, refused at commit time if you do not hold it
awseal	that the artifact came from who you think	an Ed25519 seal — the key that verifies is not the key that forges
awshare	that the download is intact	content-addressed bundles, verified on fetch
awnest	that there is a person on the other end	a verdict with evidence, where "we could not tell" is not "yes"
awnboard	a share link anyone who sees it can use	an invitation addressed to one person, for one gate, revocable
awnix	that the box is what you left it as	an immutable image you built, with atomic rollback
awrecover	that the restore worked	a restore that fully lands or does not land at all
awrelay	a SaaS in the middle of your agents	findings, alerts and coordination over your own transport
awmail	a mailbox somebody else can read	mail your agents send and receive over your own server
awfind	one vendor's idea of the web	results from whichever providers you configured
awbrowse	that the page said what you were told	the render, the DOM and the requests it made
aitherkvcache	a vendor's quantisation defaults	sub-byte KV cache kernels you can benchmark yourself
AitherZero	a pile of scripts nobody has numbered	numbered, discoverable automation with declarative playbooks
AitherConnect	what a page tells your browser to do	a federated search and desktop bridge you host
awreason	a confident paragraph	the phases it went through, and every tool call it made to get there
awrecurse	that everything you pasted in was actually read	which slices it opened, and what it concluded from each
awprism	the first explanation that fits	the ranked alternatives, and the observation that separates them
awrepl	what the agent believes the value is	the value, printed from the live session
awresearch	a summary of pages nobody opened	every claim against the source it came from
awpredict	a model because it trained without erroring	its prediction against a self-updating lookup, on the rows that are actually novel
awkno	that the docs site is up, or that you remember the family	the whole ecosystem in your terminal, with no network at all

awnix is the ground floor — A Linux you can hand to an agent — immutable base, capabilities included.

The Aitherium ecosystem

Every repository here is public. Each publishes an aither-manifest.json beside its page, so any surface can read every sibling's — the network is browsable from any node in it.

repo	what it is	pages
awdk	Build AI agent fleets — 3 lines, any backend, local or cloud	docs
awskills	Portable agent skills — self-contained procedures an agent loads on demand	docs
awm	A portable, scoped agent memory	docs
awnode	A lightweight local gateway — bridges your apps to the AI backends you chose	docs
awrun	A priority-aware queue and dispatcher for agentic runs and ad-hoc CI builds	docs
awgraph	A semantic code graph for agents — AST + tree-sitter, call graphs	docs
awgit	Semantic version control on top of git — edit-ops and leases	docs
awseal	Sign an artifact so a stranger can verify it	docs
awshare	Publish an artifact and fetch it back verified	docs
awdit	An append-only audit trail whose gaps are DETECTABLE	docs
awbac (you are here)	Role-based access control that fails closed and explains itself	docs
awiam	Who is this caller? A directory and session store that fails honestly	docs
awtunnel	Reach a service that has no public address	docs
awnest	Prove there is a human before you let them into the nest	docs
awnboard	A front gate you can put in front of anything, and hand someone the key to	docs
awnix	A Linux you can hand to an agent — immutable base, capabilities included	docs
awrecover	Labelled snapshots with an all-or-nothing restore	docs
awrelay	Portable agent messaging — findings, alerts, coordination	docs
awmail	Give an agent an email address — send, and actually receive	docs
awnet	The agentic web — agents host a mesh, and agents join one	docs
awfind	A portable search client — query, results, ranking	docs
awbrowse	A portable browser client — navigate, console, network, DOM, screenshot	docs
awknowledge	How to run a coding agent so the result survives — the laws, with evidence	docs
aitherkvcache	Near-optimal KV cache quantization for LLM inference — sub-byte compression	docs
AitherZero	PowerShell 7+ automation framework — numbered, self-describing scripts	docs
AitherConnect	Browser extension — federated AI search, page context, and the Living OS overlay	docs
awreason	A portable reasoning client — sessions, phases, thoughts, and the chain that produced the answer	docs
awrecurse	Answer a question over a context far larger than the window — recursively, with the trace kept	docs
awprism	Turn a failure into ranked hypotheses — and say what would confirm each one	docs
awrepl	A REPL an agent can actually use — state that survives between turns	docs
awresearch	Ask a research question, get a cited report you can check	docs
awpredict	Predict what your environment does next, and how surprised you were	docs
awkno	The man page for the Aither World — every brick, stack and law, offline	docs

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