awrun — dynamic priority for the runs you actually control

Docs · Source · pip install awrun · 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; awrun is one of its 65 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account.

Start here: Queue two runs at different priorities and watch the urgent one overtake.

GitHub Actions' self-hosted runner queue is FIFO-per-label, opaque, and un-reprioritizable — there is no API to say "run this one next." That is a hard platform limit, not a bug. What that limit produces in practice is a "belt-fed machine gun": everything fires in arrival order, and a low-value build queued a minute earlier blocks a high-value one indefinitely, with no lever to move it up.

awrun does not try to reprioritize GitHub's own queue for other people's pushes — it can't, and claiming otherwise would be a lie. What it delivers, completely and correctly, is dynamic priority over the class of run that actually matters most: work submitted through it — agentic/ADK runs end-to-end (no GitHub Actions involvement at all), and ad-hoc workflow_dispatch CI builds, so the order in which we fire them is finally something a human or an agent can steer while it's in flight.

pip install awrun

Python 3.10+. No hard dependencies for the core queue.

What it is

A durable, cross-process priority queue (store.py) plus a CLI (cli.py) and a dispatch loop (dispatcher.py). Modeled directly on awdk/adk/decisions/store.py — one JSON file per item, atomic os.replace() writes — with one deliberate improvement: claiming an item is an os.rename() between status directories (queued/ → claimed/ → ...), which is a genuine cross-process mutex with no lock file needed, rather than a Python threading.RLock() that only protects one process.

awrun submit --kind agent --task "verify the fix" --priority 5
awrun submit --kind ci --workflow product-images.yml --ref develop \
  --field images=gargbot --field push=true --priority 8
awrun queue                       # highest priority first, oldest breaks ties
awrun bump r-7f3a9c2e --priority 10   # the literal missing feature
awrun cancel r-7f3a9c2e
awrun status r-7f3a9c2e

AITHER_AWRUN_DIR overrides the store location (default ~/.aither/awrun/) — set it in tests and for per-tenant isolation.

What it is not

Not a new daemon. decisions/store.py already proves a durable, pollable, cross-process queue doesn't need one — awrun dispatch (via awrun.dispatcher) runs as a scheduled task or a one-shot --once invocation, matching AitherOS/config/routines/*.yaml's existing pattern.

Not a replacement for required PR-gate CI, which stays on GitHub Actions' native triggers. awrun targets ad-hoc dispatches only.

What it dispatches, as shipped

All three kinds below are implemented, routed and self-tested. Dispatch is priority-first ACROSS kinds, not per-kind — the whole point is one queue an urgent item can jump.

kind	what it runs
agent	adk chat <agent> "<task>"
ci	gh workflow run <workflow> --ref <ref> -f k=v...
comet-deploy	a POST to AitherComet's /deploy, tenant-scoped and cost-gated
render	host-registered: a media render; the renderer passes its own run_fns=
artpack	host-registered: a character art pack bake
solve	host-registered: a problem-solving session
flow	a journaled workflow in a child process; resumes by replay
tunnel	host-registered: expose or retire a public hostname on a plane (tunnel/pages/worker); submit is authz-gated like comet-deploy

This section used to say kind=agent dispatch only, and list kind=ci among "the next phases", while ci was implemented, routed and covered by a self-test. That cost a real one: a release sat queued behind a saturated runner pool and nobody reached for awrun, because the README said the feature did not exist yet. A capability documented as unbuilt is unbuilt in practice — nobody calls it, so nothing exercises it, so nobody notices it works. A repo-side check now asserts this section against the dispatcher's own routing table, so it cannot drift back.

Stateful runs: suspend, resume, move

A run can be parked and continued. It keeps its id, priority and age.

awrun suspend r-7f3a9c2e      # queued: parked now. running: its runner is asked to stop
awrun resume  r-7f3a9c2e      # back in the queue, where it was

--kind flow is where this pays. A flow is a journaled workflow, and the run id is the journal id, so a resumed flow replays the calls it already made instead of making them again. Measured by this package's own test, which stops a real child process mid-workflow: of four model calls, the two that had finished were made exactly once across suspend and resume; only the call that was in flight when the run stopped was repeated.

awrun submit --kind flow --script research.py --name nightly-research   --lineage goal=G-42 --lineage expedition=exp-7 --priority 5

Replay trusts the journal, so the journal is digested at suspend and checked at resume: one that changed while parked is refused, not replayed.

A suspended run can also leave the machine. awrun export bundles the run and its journal and closes the local copy; awrun import lands it suspended on another queue under the same id. Import verifies before it unpacks -- against the digest the exporter printed, or against the exporter's public signing key -- and refuses a bundle offered with neither.

Declarative: awrun apply

apiVersion: awrun/v1
kind: Run
metadata:
  name: nightly-research
  lineage: {goal: G-42, intent: keep-the-index-fresh}
spec:
  kind: flow
  priority: 5
  limits: {timeout_s: 3600, cpus: 2, memory_mb: 4096}
  egress: {hosts: [pypi.org, "*.githubusercontent.com"], proxy: "http://10.89.0.1:3128", network: jail}
  isolation: {mode: container, image: "ghcr.io/you/agent:1"}
  run: {script: research.py}

awrun apply -f runs.yaml converges the queue on the manifest, by name. Applying it twice is a no-op (unchanged); a new priority is configured; a new spec is replaced; every document is validated before any is written. apply goes through the same authorization as submit -- it cannot queue what submit refuses. JSON manifests need nothing; YAML needs pip install 'awrun[yaml]'.

Confinement that fails closed

limits and egress are promises, so a run whose runner cannot keep them is failed before it starts -- never run unconfined. timeout_s is enforced on any local run. cpus, memory_mb and egress need isolation: container (capabilities dropped, no new privileges). egress.hosts: [] means no network at all. A non-empty allowlist places the run on an INTERNAL container network whose only exit is awrun egress-proxy, and awrun asks the runtime whether that network really is internal before it starts anything:

awrun egress-proxy --listen 10.89.0.1:3128 --allow pypi.org --allow '*.githubusercontent.com'

The proxy matches the name the client asked for, before any lookup; a listed host opens ports 80 and 443 only; every denial is logged.

Who did what

lineage records why a run exists (intent, goal, expedition, flow, plan, notebook, parent_run); awrun queue --lineage goal=G-42 answers "what is running for this goal". Suspend, resume, cancel, apply, export and import are written to a hash-chained audit trail before they happen. Set AWRUN_LIFECYCLE_OPERATORS and they also need a resolved identity session on that list; set AWRUN_AUDIT_REQUIRED=1 and a change that cannot be recorded does not happen. pip install 'awrun[governed]'.

Verification

python -m pytest tests/
python -m awrun.cli self-test
python -m awrun.dispatcher --self-test

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
awpack	that the pack you want shipped inside somebody's SDK, under whatever licence that SDK happens to carry	the pack as its own versioned artifact, with its own licence, that any agent runtime can install
awm	that memory stayed in its lane	tenant:user:project scopes, so a write cannot cross a boundary
awdesk	that the agent is somewhere behind a browser tab	a tray icon, a face on your desktop, and the decision card that pops when it needs you
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
awdelphi	one agent's confident take on a decision	the round trace, the anonymity, and who dissents
awclassify	a filename, a folder, or whoever last touched it	doc_type, visibility, audience and topics, with the evidence lines that decided each
awtoll	that your tooling is saving you context	the measured token cost of each tool call, and what the alternative cost
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"
awrena	a leaderboard someone can edit, and votes nobody counted	a scored duel with both answers kept, and a result bound to them
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
awstorage	a du you ran last month, and a peers file that says 3 TB free	an inventory snapshot per node with a diff since the last one, and each tree classified re-fetchable or not
awrelay	a SaaS in the middle of your agents	findings, alerts and coordination over your own transport
awask	that anyone read the paragraph where you asked	the ask itself, with a button that steers the session that raised it
awmail	a mailbox somebody else can read	mail your agents send and receive over your own server
awswarm	that a model either fits your GPU or it doesn't run at all	a placement plan and an acquisition-probability estimate before you spend on a run
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
awvoice	that a cloud vendor may hold your audio	a transcript and a wav from a service you host
awvision	a filename and a caption somebody wrote	what a model actually reports about the pixels
awscreen	a selector that was true when the page was written	the elements actually rendered, by what they look like
awbeads	that a layout your users built survives the next deploy	the arrangement as data you can read back, diff, and hand to another surface
awbonsai	that inference always means a request left the machine	a WebGPU model answering on the tab's own GPU, with a consent record logged before it ever loaded
gawbbonet	the model to keep a 300-message campaign coherent by itself	campaign facts recalled from scoped memory you can list and edit
aitherkvcache	a vendor's quantisation defaults	sub-byte KV cache kernels you can benchmark yourself
awrtifact	a hand-rolled split script and a hand-edited worker manifest	byte-verified parts in a release, served with Range + CORS, sizes asserted by a live gate
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
awreport	that the report you pasted carried no token in it	a redacted report, and the duplicate it merged into instead of filing twice
awresearch	a summary of pages nobody opened	every claim against the source it came from
awfocus	twelve terminal tabs and a bad memory	one command that names every session, finds any transcript, and opens or steers the one you want
awgym	that a world model learned anything from the games it saw	transitions captured from real play, fed back, and the retrodiction score falling on grids it never saw
awpredict	a model because it trained without erroring	its prediction against a self-updating lookup, on the rows that are actually novel
awevolve	that your optimisation loop is finding anything	every version it kept, the score that version earned, and the edit that produced it
awsh	that you already know the name of the command	what it decided your line meant, before it acts on it
awmine	that a session's lesson survived the session	a row per outcome, a candidate per lesson, and the transcript line each one came from
awrise	that a scheduled agent ran at all, and ran exactly once	a durable record of every wake -- fired, skipped, overlapped or timed out -- each with its reason
awkno	that the docs site is up, or that you remember the family	the whole ecosystem in your terminal, with no network at all
awwall	that a service only talks to the hosts you think it talks to	an explicit egress allowlist, where a denial names the rule that denied it
awembed	a general-purpose embedder that has never seen your code	a held-out split of whole directories, scored teacher vs student vs int8
awtax	a closed tax app's sealed file you can never read again	a plain, provider-neutral schema of every figure, with the page it came from
awsettings	that you will remember to re-approve the same thing on every box you work from	one profile, unioned rather than overwritten, with the credentials left behind
awavatar	a cloud 3D vendor's opaque task id	a manifest with a sha256, a licence and a rig-audit verdict per file

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
awpack	First-party agent packs — the ones we build, versioned and installable on their own	docs
awm	A portable, scoped agent memory	docs
awdesk	Aither World Desk -- the desktop body of AitherOS Online: tray, avatars, decision cards, the Living Desktop as an overlay	docs
awnode	A lightweight local gateway — bridges your apps to the AI backends you chose	docs
awrun (you are here)	A priority-aware queue and dispatcher for agentic runs and ad-hoc CI builds. It also judges whether the runner pool is big enough for the queue it is draining, and can ask a host to grow it -- reserving capacity is zero-sum, so a saturated pool needs more of it, not a different share of it	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
awdelphi	Anonymous multi-round expert panels — a converged answer with a trace	docs
awclassify	Classify any document -- what it is, who may read it, who it is for, what it is about	—
awtoll	What every tool call costs you in context, measured from your own transcripts	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
awrena	Put two agents head to head and get a verdict you can check	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
awstorage	Every drive on every node, indexed, classified and diffed -- so you can see what you own before you delete it	docs
awrelay	Portable agent messaging — findings, alerts, coordination	docs
awask	Your agent asks you a question — and acts on your answer	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
awswarm	Run one model too big for any single GPU across a pool of small ones	—
awfind	A portable search client — query, results, ranking	docs
awbrowse	A portable browser client — navigate, console, network, DOM, screenshot	docs
awvoice	Hear and speak — transcribe audio, synthesize a voice	docs
awvision	See an image — describe it, ask it a question, compare two	docs
awscreen	See this machine — what is on screen, and where to click it	docs
awkit	Render an agent panel from a tool result — one component, any React app	—
awbeads	A spatial canvas for a page — arrange things, connect them, and keep the arrangement	—
awbonsai	Run a real model in the visitor's own browser — no server round trip, no upload	—
awknowledge	How to run a coding agent so the result survives — the laws, with evidence	docs
awbrain	Your history as a wiki of linked markdown — claims pinned to the evidence	—
gawbbonet	GobboNet campaigns with a real agent brain — scoped memory, graph recall	docs
aitherkvcache	Near-optimal KV cache quantization for LLM inference — sub-byte compression	docs
awrtifact	Deliberately chunk artifacts into GitHub release assets — the productized aitherkvcache mirror lane	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
awreport	File a bug report that has already scrubbed your secrets and collapsed the duplicate	—
awresearch	Ask a research question, get a cited report you can check	docs
awfocus	See, search and steer every Claude session from one command	docs
awgym	An ARC training gym — a game a world model can watch, and six roles that play through it	docs
awpredict	Predict what your environment does next, and how surprised you were	docs
awevolve	Point an agent at a file and a command that scores it, and let it improve	—
awsh	Your terminal answers you -- type a question where a command would go	docs
awmine	Mine what your agents did -- outcomes, lessons and procedures out of the transcripts they left behind	—
awrise	Wake an agent on a schedule, let it do one thing, and put it back to sleep	docs
awkno	The man page for the Aither World — every brick, stack and law, offline	docs
awwall	Say what a workload may reach, and watch everything else fail closed	docs
awrouter	OpenRouter for your own fleet: pick a model backend by cost/latency/ capability, fail over, fit the context window, stream. Standalone, OpenAI-compatible, no Aither-specifics required to be valuable	—
awembed	Train an embedding model that knows your corpus, and prove it beats the big one	docs
awtax	Turn any tax PDF -- returns, W-2, 1099, statements, even scans -- into structured data you can check	docs
awflow	A deterministic workflow runtime — chain agent calls with journal replay and budget control	docs
awsettings	Your agent's permissions and config, following you to the next machine	docs
awavatar	One character spec in, a rigged, animated, multi-style avatar pack out	docs

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