awdit

Docs · Source · pip install awdit · 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; awdit is one of its 33 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account.

Start here: Write one sensitive action to it and then try to remove the record.

An append-only audit trail whose gaps are detectable.

pip install awdit

from awdit import append, verify

append("audit.log", "deploy", service="veil", by="david")

r = verify("audit.log")
if not r:
    for problem in r.problems:
        print(problem)

awdit append audit.log deploy --field service=veil
awdit verify audit.log        # 0 verified · 1 a real problem · 2 could not judge
awdit tail   audit.log -n 20

What it actually proves

Records are hash-chained: each one binds the digest of the one before it, so altering or reordering history breaks the chain at the point of the edit and verify names the record. That much is ordinary.

The part usually got wrong is truncation. A hash chain proves the records you are holding follow one another. It says nothing about records that used to be on the end and are not there now — and cutting the tail off a chained log leaves a perfectly valid shorter chain. That is exactly the edit someone who has just done something wants to make, and exactly the one a naive "tamper-evident log" permits in silence.

So the anchor is part of the format, not an add-on. append() maintains a sidecar holding the head digest and the record count, and verify compares against it:

TRUNCATED: anchor records 3 entries, log holds 2 — 1 removed from the end

Three failures, reported as three different things, because during an incident they call for different responses:

verdict	meaning
ALTERED	a record's content no longer matches its own hash
REORDERED	a record's prev does not match the previous record's hash
TRUNCATED	the chain is internally perfect but shorter than the anchor

What it does not prove — stated, not papered over

If the anchor is on the same disk as the log, an attacker with write access edits both. The anchor turns truncation from undetectable into detectable by anyone who has a copy of the head. To get a real guarantee, put the head somewhere the writer cannot reach: another host, a signed artifact (awseal), a transparency log, a sentence in a chat channel.

A security property whose limits nobody can state is not one you can rely on, so: this detects tampering, it does not prevent it, and its truncation detection is exactly as strong as the independence of the anchor.

verify also reports NO ANCHOR as a warning that is not a pass — a chain with no anchor is self-consistent and truncatable, and reporting "ok" there would convert a missing record into a positive assurance.

Design notes

• No dependencies. An audit log that needs an install before it can be read is one nobody reads during an incident; hashlib and json are the whole requirement.
• The record lands before the anchor moves. If the process dies between the two, verification reports an anchor behind the log — recoverable and obvious. The other order loses a record while claiming completeness.
• Digests are taken over canonical JSON (sorted keys, no whitespace), so a log rewritten by a different writer does not read as tampered. An alarm that fires on formatting is an alarm nobody keeps.
• An unparseable line is reported as itself, not skipped — a silently dropped line becomes a chain gap blamed on the next record.

Tests

Every claim has a mutation that breaks it, including one asserting that a truncated chain with the anchor removed verifies clean — the proof that the anchor is load-bearing rather than decoration.

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

Part of the aw family: awgit · awgraph · awseal · awdk · awnode

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 (you are here)	An append-only audit trail whose gaps are DETECTABLE	docs
awbac	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

<script src="aither-constellation.js"></script>