Set up Claude Code the Aither way

the bricks as tools, the settings in the right scope

About 10 minutes · for builders · bricks: awdk · awsettings

Teach

One command instead of an afternoon of settings

Claude Code can use every aw* brick you already have: as MCP servers it calls, as skills it loads when the task matches, and as hooks that run around each turn. Wiring that by hand means editing several settings files and getting each one's scope right. adk claude setup does it in one step, and adk claude doctor tells you whether it is still true next week.

Which file a setting lives in matters

Claude Code reads settings from several layers: your user folder, the project, and a machine-local file next to it. A setting written to a layer that does not honour it is ignored without an error — it just does not exist (law 25). Setup writes the permission mode to your user settings only, never to a repository other people clone.

What travels and what stays

Presets and files travel between your machines; credentials never do (law 29). Setup keeps the two apart, so syncing your settings to a second machine never copies a token.

Hooks cost time on every call

A hook runs on every tool call, so a slow one slows everything (law 26). The hooks setup installs check cheaply first and only do real work when the call is one they care about.

Do

bash

adk claude setup

You should see: the awsh plugin installed and the awsettings preset applied, each line OK

If not: If it says Claude Code is not found, install Claude Code first and open a new terminal. If adk claude is unknown, run pip install -U awdk.

bash

adk claude doctor

You should see: no CCD findings - exit 0

If not: Each CCD code names the file and the setting that drifted; run adk claude setup again, then doctor.

Check you are done

bash

adk claude doctor

You should see: no CCD findings

What you learned

Claude Code reads settings from several layers; a setting in a layer that does not honour it silently does not exist.
Permission mode belongs in your user settings, never in a repository other people clone.
Presets and files travel between machines; credentials never do.

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.