awtunnel

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

Start here: Expose one local port to one remote caller and take it away again.

Ingress rule validation that catches scheme mismatches and detects shadowing.

pip install awtunnel

from awtunnel import validate_rules

rules = [
    {"hostname": "api.aitherium.com", "path": "^/v1", "origin": "http://gateway:8080"},
    {"hostname": "api.aitherium.com", "path": "^/auth", "origin": "https://identity:8115"},
]

result = validate_rules(rules)
if not result.ok:
    for finding in result.findings:
        print(finding)

awtunnel validate rules.yaml    # 0 ok · 1 real problem · 2 could not judge
awtunnel check   rules.yaml hostname path  # check if a specific route exists

The bug this package is shaped around

Tunnel connectors are unforgiving: a rule saying http://security-core:8115 while that service serves TLS fails as "origin unreachable" rather than "origin serves TLS, rule is wrong". The symptom names the innocent service, costs a session debugging the healthy container, and is completely silent to every configuration tool.

Three related traps, all invisible to config alone:

1. Scheme mismatch: http:// into a TLS listener closes the socket immediately. The connector reports "Unable to reach the origin", but the origin is running and healthy. Nothing in the config says which is wrong.

2. Duplicate schemes on same host:port: One rule says http://security-core:8115, another says https://security-core:8115. They are different rules, both valid config, and one or both will fail at runtime depending on which the connector tries first.

3. Shadowing: A broad hostname pattern (*.aitherium.com) or a short path prefix (e.g., ^/api) can match before a more specific rule. The more-specific rule's route is unreachable, and the request lands on the wrong origin. No error, no rejected config — the path works, just on the wrong host.

What this package proves

validate_rules() reads a rule set and asserts three invariants:

• No scheme conflicts: the same (host, port) pair appears in at most one rule
• No unresolvable hostnames: every host either is an IP or resolves via DNS
• No shadowing: rule ordering cannot hide a later rule behind an earlier one

Each is its own finding, with the rule and the conflicting peer named. Because during an incident they call for different responses:

finding	fix
SCHEME CONFLICT	pick one scheme (likely TLS), remove the other rule
UNRESOLVABLE HOST	fix the hostname or move it behind a load balancer that does resolve
SHADOWED	reorder the rules, or narrow the pattern

What it does not do

This validates the rule set alone, not the actual services. A rule can pass validation and still fail at runtime if the origin is down, the scheme is right but the port is wrong, or the service binds a different interface.

• validate_rules() does NOT reach out to origins — that is runtime work.
• It does NOT check whether a hostname actually resolves (the resolver might not yet exist when rules are written).
• It does NOT verify that the origin actually listens on the declared scheme and port.

A rule that passes validation may still fail to serve requests. To get a real guarantee, test the rule live: send a request through the connector and verify it reaches the origin you intended.

Design notes

• No dependencies. Config validation that needs an install before it can run is one nobody runs during an incident.
• Findings name the rule. A validator that reports "there is a problem" without saying which rule is shaped around the assumption that all rules are identical, which they are not.
• Order matters. validate_rules() checks shadowing by rule position, because routing is positional — the first matching rule wins. A rule that is valid in position 3 might be shadowed if moved to position 5.
• Hostname patterns are literal. Glob patterns and regex are interpreted by the connector, not this package. The validator does not parse them — it reads them as literal strings for collision detection. If two rules have the same hostname string, they conflict; if one is *.aitherium.com and another is api.aitherium.com, the validator does not know whether they overlap.

Tests

Every finding has a test that produces it, and the suite includes both negative cases (rules that should pass) and positive ones (rules that should fail). Tests run in both directions: a suite that only checks for problems passes trivially if validation always fails, so both "rule is valid" and "rule is invalid" assertions are present.

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

Where it sits

In a larger system, ingress rules live in multiple places with conflicting truths:

• config files (static YAML the owner wrote)
• the connector's live config (what Cloudflare/nginx is actually using right now)
• the deployed services (what origins are really listening)

This package validates the config files. To get a complete picture:

1. Validate the source config → awtunnel (this package)
2. Compare config to live connector → edge-specific tool (e.g., cf_dns_list)
3. Test the connector output → network tool (e.g., curl with the right User-Agent)

Only step 1 is portable. Steps 2 and 3 are connector-specific and belong elsewhere.

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	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 (you are here)	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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