awrecurse

Answer a question over a context far larger than the model's window — recursively, with the trace of which slices were actually read.

pip install awrecurse

from awrecurse import RecurseClient

c = RecurseClient("https://recurse.example.com", token="...")
result = c.recurse(huge_document, "what changed in version 2.1?")
print(result["final_answer"])
print(result["slices_read"])  # which parts the model actually examined

awrecurse ask --file BIG.txt --query "what changed in version 2.1?"
awrecurse ask --file BIG.txt --query "..." --max-iterations 20
awrecurse ask --file BIG.txt --query "..." --json
awrecurse health          # service status
awrecurse --self-test     # prove the contract, offline

---

What this is, and what it is not

It is a client. Recursion, chunking, aggregation and model queries stay in the service; this is the wire contract, packaged so anything can speak it.

That split is deliberate. The alternative was lifting a 2,500-line cognitive system with dozens of private imports into a package, which produces something that ModuleNotFoundErrors on your machine while reading as authoritative. A broken package is worse than no package.

route	what it does
POST /recurse	recursively answer a question about a large context
GET /health	service health and status
GET /config	service configuration and capabilities

---

The bug this package exists to prevent

Your model has a window. A context larger than the window doesn't raise an error. The middle gets dropped. The model answers fluently from the beginning and end, and the reply looks exactly like an answer drawn from the whole thing.

The failure is a SILENCE.

# Naive approach — the model's output looks right, but:
model.complete("Here is a 200-page document:\n" + huge_doc + "\n\nQuestion: " + q)
# ↑ The middle 180 pages were dropped. The answer about the middle is wrong.
# ↑ No error, no warning, no shorter answer. It looks right.

The only protection is tracking which parts of the context were actually examined. So every result includes slices_read — the list of (start_char, end_char) tuples showing which chunks the model looked at. Without it, you're blind to the exact failure case this package is written to prevent.

result = c.recurse(huge_doc, "what changed in the middle section?")
print(result["slices_read"])  # [(start, end), (start, end), ...]
# If the middle section is NOT here, the answer is garbage.

---

How it works: Recursive Language Model (RLM)

The algorithm (from Zhang, Kraska & Khattab, arXiv:2512.24601):

1. Split the context into slices smaller than the window.
2. Query the first slice for an answer. If found, return it and the slice index.
3. If not found, recursively query the remaining slices by aggregating their answers.
4. Cap iterations to prevent runaway loops; return the best answer found.

The result is exact — which parts were examined — because the model never sees the parts that were not asked. If a question requires the middle, the middle will be in slices_read.

---

Config

The service origin comes from --url or AWRECURSE_URL; the token from --token or AWRECURSE_TOKEN. Neither is guessed — a client that quietly falls back to some default endpoint sends your queries somewhere you did not choose.

export AWRECURSE_URL="https://recurse.example.com"
export AWRECURSE_TOKEN="sk-..."
awrecurse ask --file doc.txt --query "..."

For local recursion (no service), pass a complete_fn callable to RecurseClient:

def my_complete(prompt: str) -> str:
    # Your completion logic here
    return model.complete(prompt)

c = RecurseClient(complete_fn=my_complete)
result = c.recurse(huge_doc, "question")

---

Two things it refuses to do

Return empty on failure. A recursion that failed raises RecurseError. An empty result might mean "no answer was found" (a valid result) or "the service is down" (a failure), and a client that returns the same for both makes a dead backend look exactly like an unpopular query — nobody investigates unpopular queries.

Send an empty Authorization header. No token means no header at all. An empty Bearer is rejected differently from an absent one, and the difference sends you debugging the auth server instead of your config.

---

--self-test

Every install can prove the client still holds its contract, with no service and no network:

$ awrecurse --self-test
  PASS  recurse body is exactly the declared field set, with expected defaults
  PASS  empty inputs and unreasonable limits are refused with a reason
  PASS  chunking splits context, results track slices_read, local mode works
SELF-TEST: awrecurse ok

The assertions here are the load-bearing ones: the result MUST include slices_read. Without it, silent truncation is invisible.

---

Limits and trade-offs

More calls, not cheaper. Recursion makes multiple model calls where one would have sufficed. If cost-per-call matters, RLM is not free.

Not a vector database. Recursion works well when the answer is localized — a span that fits in one or two chunks. For questions that need to aggregate across the whole document, RLM makes many calls and still synthesizes; vector search would be better if the corpus is in a database.

Sequential, not parallel. The current implementation chunks and queries sequentially. Parallelizing chunks (asking several at once) is possible but requires different plumbing — the service would handle it, not the client.

---

See also

• RLM paper — Zhang, Kraska & Khattab
• awdk — build AI agent fleets
• awm — scoped agent memory
• awskills — portable agent procedures

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
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 (you are here)	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

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
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
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
awfind	A portable search client — query, results, ranking	docs
awbrowse	A portable browser client — navigate, console, network, DOM, screenshot	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 (you are here)	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