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awknowledge — the guide
MIT · the Aither World Guide

The Aither World Guide

From "what is an agent?" to a terminal that answers you - one path, nothing skipped.

12 chapters · about 240 minutes end to end · every command checked against the kit that ships it · 55 bricks in the reference · 29 laws behind it

Start at chapter 0 Browse the man pages
Two columns on every chapter: Teach says what a thing is and why it exists, in plain words. Do is the exact command, what you should see, and what to do if you do not. You never need a later chapter to finish an earlier one.
Chapter 0

Welcome to Aither World

What Aitherium, AitherOS and the aw* bricks are - in plain words, before you install anything.

about 5 min · 0 commandsChapter 1

Install awdk

One command puts the whole kit on your machine. Then you check it worked.

about 10 min · 5 commandsChapter 2

Your first local brain

Run an open model on your own computer, offline. Learn what "8B" and "1-bit" actually mean.

about 20 min · 2 commandsChapter 3

Talk to it

Ask your brain one question, then open a chat. Optionally connect to the cloud for the bigger brains.

about 15 min · 4 commandsChapter 4

Build your first agent

An agent is a brain plus tools plus a job. You will scaffold one in three files and watch it use a tool.

about 30 min · 4 commandsChapter 5

Agent packs

Someone already built the agent you want. Find it, install it, run it - and know what is still coming.

about 15 min · 3 commandsChapter 6

Your own hardware

CPU or GPU, laptop or rack - how the open model stack picks a model for what you have, and how a brain gets registered.

about 30 min · 3 commandsChapter 7

Deploy on awnix

An immutable Linux built for machines where software writes software. Your agent becomes three lines in a Dockerfile.

about 45 min · 5 commandsChapter 8

Many agents, one repo

Two agents editing the same code without sweeping each other's work - leases, a call graph, messaging, memory.

about 30 min · 4 commandsChapter 9

The omnibox

Your terminal answers you. Type a question where a command would go.

about 10 min · 4 commandsChapter 10

Build a pack

Write a tool pack, check it without running it, load it the way an agent will, and build bytes anyone can verify.

about 20 min · 4 commandsChapter 11

Set up Claude Code the Aither way

Put every aw* brick in Claude Code as tools, skills and hooks with one command, then check it stays that way.

about 10 min · 2 commands

Reference

  • Man pages — one page per brick: what it is, what problem it solves, how to install it, where it sits in the path.
  • The laws — 29 rules for running agents so the result survives. Every one was a real failure first; chapter 8 is where they start to matter.
  • Skills — procedures an agent can load, one file each.

One estate, 8 doors

These projects are organs of the same system — the same identity plane, the same agent runtime, the same operational discipline. Follow any of them.

the osaitherium.comThe Living OS these four repos are cut from. Open, no login.pythonawdkBuild AI agent fleets — 3 lines, any backend, local or cloud.markdownawskillsPortable agent skills — self-contained procedures an agent loads on demand.markdownawknowledgeHow to run a coding agent so the result survives — the laws, with evidence.cudaaitherkvcacheNear-optimal KV cache quantization for LLM inference — sub-byte compression.powershellAitherZeroPowerShell 7+ automation framework — numbered, self-describing scripts.writingThe BlogHow all of it is actually built, measured and operated.pythonawrunA 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.

The ecosystem this belongs to

Every Aitherium repository publishes an aither-manifest.json beside its page, and each surface reads all of them — so the network is browsable from any node in it.

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. awknowledge is one of its 66 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account. All 66 →