awbac

Docs · Source · pip install awbac · 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; awbac is one of its 67 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account.

Start here: Gate one endpoint and read the explanation it gives for a denial.

Role-based access control that fails closed and explains itself.

```bash
pip install awbac

```python
from awbac import Policy

p = (Policy()
     .role("reader", ["doc:read:*"])
     .role("editor", ["doc:write:*"], inherits=["reader"])
     .assign("david", "editor"))

d = p.check("david", "doc:read:handbook")
if d:
    ...
print(d.reason)     # granted by 'doc:read:*'

```bash
awbac check   policy.json david doc:read:handbook   # 0 allow · 1 deny · 2 could not judge
awbac explain policy.json david doc:write:secret
# DENY: none of 2 grant(s) cover 'doc:write:secret'

The bug this package is shaped around

Permissions are colon-separated: workspace:read:*. The obvious matcher is granted.startswith(requested), and it fails open:

```python
"workspace:readwrite".startswith("workspace:read")   # True

A grant of workspace:read silently covers workspace:readwrite. Nothing raises, no happy-path test notices, and it stays invisible until someone writes to something they could only read.

So matching is on segments, never characters. * matches exactly one segment; ** matches one or more trailing segments and is refused anywhere but last, because a mid-position ** reads as a typo far more often than as intent.

Fails closed on every path

Unknown role, unknown subject, anonymous caller, empty permission, malformed policy, inheritance cycle, an exception mid-evaluation — every one denies, with the cause named:

• an unknown role contributes nothing, not everything
• an inheritance cycle resolves what it can rather than raising (one bad role must not take down all authorization) or looping forever
• an exception returns a denial that says so, instead of propagating to a caller who might treat a raise as an allow
• an unreadable policy file exits 2, not 1 — "denied" is routine and would be shrugged off, so a missing policy has to look different from a refused request

Every decision carries a reason

A deny nobody can explain gets worked around. An allow nobody can attribute cannot be audited. So Decision carries reason, and an allow also carries via — the exact grant that permitted it.

Tests

15 tests, and they run in both directions: a suite that only asserts denials passes on a policy that denies everything, and one that only asserts allows passes on a policy that allows everything. There is a test whose whole job is to fail if the policy were replaced by a deny-all.

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

Where it sits

Deliberately three packages. An identity service that also owns authorization has nobody to check it, and one that owns its own key material has nobody to attest it.

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.

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.

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