awrecover

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

Start here: Snapshot one directory, break it, restore it, diff it.

Snapshot a directory, and get it back — with proof that you can.

pip install awrecover

awrecover snapshot ./run --store .snaps --label pre-finetune
awrecover verify   --store .snaps --label pre-finetune      # RESTORES it, to a scratch dir
awrecover restore  --store .snaps --label pre-finetune --dest ./run

Python 3.10+. awrecover needs awshare, which it installs with; add pip install "awshare[seal]" if you want snapshots signed as well as digested.

Deliberately thin

A snapshot is an awshare bundle. Archiving, digesting, atomic writes, path containment, refusing symlinks and bounding expansion are all awshare's job and are not reimplemented here. awrecover adds exactly two things awshare has no opinion about:

• a label index, so you say pre-finetune instead of remembering a digest
• a restore that fully lands or does not land at all

If you want a bundle, use awshare. You want awrecover when you will be coming back for it under a name, possibly in a hurry.

Two rules it exists to enforce

A backup nobody has restored is a hypothesis

verify does not check that the archive exists, or that it is a plausible size. Those pass for a snapshot of the wrong directory, a truncated one, and one taken of nothing at all. It restores into a scratch directory, through the same code path a real restore uses, and throws the result away.

awrecover verify --store .snaps --label pre-finetune
# 0  restorable — this really came back
# 1  checked, and it is NOT restorable
# 2  could not check at all

Exit 1 and exit 2 stay separate for the reason they always must: collapsing them turns "I could not check this" into "it checked out".

There is a narrower version of the same trap inside verify itself. A label can be present in the index while its manifest is gone — so the index says the backup exists and the backup does not. That is reported as its own error, in those words: the index is a claim; the archive is the backup.

A half-restore is worse than no restore

It destroys the working state and fails to deliver the snapshot. So restore never writes into the target:

1. unpack into a staging dir BESIDE dest      (a failure here changes nothing)
2. verify the staged tree
3. move dest aside     -> .awrecover-replaced-<label>-<pid>
4. rename staging      -> dest

The window where neither tree is in place is one rename wide. And the tree it replaced is moved aside, not deleted — if the swap fails, your old state is still there under a name you can find. Pass --discard-replaced when you are sure and want the space back.

If anything fails before step 3, the error says Nothing was changed, and it is telling the truth.

Everything it does

awrecover snapshot DIR --store S --label L [--seal] [--key-path P]	take one
awrecover list --store S	label, when, digest, file count
awrecover verify --store S --label L [--key K]	prove it restores
awrecover restore --store S --label L --dest D [--key K] [--discard-replaced]	put it back
awrecover drop --store S --label L	remove one — explicit, never implicit
awrecover doctor	what is installed, and whether the store answers

import awrecover
from pathlib import Path

awrecover.snapshot(Path("run"), Path(".snaps"), "pre-finetune")
awrecover.verify(Path(".snaps"), "pre-finetune")          # raises if it will not restore
r = awrecover.restore(Path(".snaps"), "pre-finetune", Path("run"))
r["replaced"]   # where your previous tree went

awrecover.latest(Path(".snaps"))        # the most recent Snapshot, or None
awrecover.list_snapshots(Path(".snaps"))

--key on verify and restore is passed through to awshare, so a snapshot can be required to come from a known publisher and not merely to be intact. Integrity and provenance are two questions; awshare answers the first and awseal the second.

Licence

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 (you are here)	that the restore worked	a restore that fully lands or does not land at all
awkno	that the docs site is up, or that you remember the family	the whole ecosystem in your terminal, with no network 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	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 (you are here)	Labelled snapshots with an all-or-nothing restore	docs
awkno	The man page for the Aither World — every brick, stack and law, offline	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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