AOS Community Edition
AOS Community Edition is the open agent operating system for people who want an inspectable, composable environment for agents.
It owns the Community Edition product surface: the aos CLI, HTTP API,
distributions, first-party capsules, provider and model experience, and
Unicity Audit.
Workspace layout
crates/ Product CLI, HTTP API, control client, and shared product code
capsules/ First-party production capsules
distros/ Community distribution manifests and release metadata
docs/ Product and operator documentation
Install
The supported installer installs the aos product command, its pinned runtime,
and the exact 21 Community Edition capsules built from this source tree under
the product-owned ~/.aos root:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://aos.unicity.ai/install.sh | sh
aos initaos init, including aos init --offline, provisions from those local,
product-versioned capsule assets. Re-running the installer performs a
coordinated product upgrade without
rewriting a standalone runtime installation. Every release publishes
checksums, Sigstore bundles, GitHub build-provenance attestations, and
runtime-compatibility.toml, which pins the exact runtime release and WIT commit.
Its machine-readable runtime-compatibility and upgrade/self-heal gates must both
be true before a tag can publish. The latter is approved only after the exact
candidate preserves a frozen standalone-home clone and boots with freshly
generated runtime coordination state.
Command boundary
AOS owns its product roots, including init, status, migrate, update,
distro, mcp, daemon, and serve-health:
aos status
aos status --json
aos --principal codex-code mcp serve
aos daemon foreground --workspace /workspaceOn Unix, aos daemon foreground replaces the AOS process with the persistent
bundled daemon, preserving direct signal and exit-status ownership for process
supervisors. On other hosts it waits for the daemon and preserves its exit
status. Both paths apply the product-owned runtime home, .aos workspace
layout, enforced Community Edition distro, and stderr logging environment.
Neither path enables ephemeral lifetime.
Every other runtime root is part of the AOS CLI directly. Arguments, exit
codes, and signals pass through unchanged; there is no nested aos astrid or
aos runtime namespace:
aos doctor
aos capsule buildWhen AOS owns a root such as status, init, update, or mcp, its product
implementation replaces the lower-level command at that same location. The
complete supported surface therefore remains aos <verb>. Release validation
compares the exact pinned runtime's public command inventory with AOS's
classified root contract, so a new runtime verb cannot enter a product release
without an explicit inherit-or-own decision.
aos mcp serve is the product edge shared by Codex, Claude, and Grok. A client
that supports MCP form elicitation keeps presenting its own constrained
approval forms. When a client does not, the default --interaction auto mode
uses a local AOS decision surface: AppKit on macOS, a native Windows dialog, or
Pinentry on Linux. --interaction client, native, and deny make the policy
explicit. The local bridge accepts only a single boolean or the fixed AOS
approval enum; arbitrary strings, password-shaped fields, and URL
elicitations are never collected through it.
Build on AOS
Unicity AOS is the operating system in which agents and agent-native software
run. Capsules are general user-space building blocks: users can compose them
into harnesses, meta-harnesses, connectors, services, or other systems.
Community Edition ships Forge as OS construction tooling so a fresh agent can
inspect the running system, learn the capsule model, identify a real capability
gap, and build and verify a least-privilege capsule. Forge also installs the
meta-harness skill, which teaches an agent how to build a governed
meta-harness on AOS by treating its instructions, memory, skills, harness code,
tools, capsules, traces, and evaluations as an improvable user-space world. The
agent is instructed to notice useful extensions during real work and reach for
Forge proactively when new code is the right way to improve that world.
See Extending an agent's world on AOS for the world model, research loop, Forge boundary, optional worker pattern, and representative user experiences.
Provisioning another principal keeps the authenticated operator separate from the target environment:
aos --principal operator init --target-principal aliceThis AOS release fixes its distribution state to Unicity CE. Use a standalone
astrid installation and runtime home to apply another distribution. Homebrew
installations update with aos update. Direct installs resolve the signed
stable channel by default and can select dev, nightly, or an exact version;
all remain fail-closed until their signed metadata is actually published. See
Signed AOS release channels.
Import an existing runtime
The aos CLI can deliberately copy compatible state from a standalone runtime
installation without changing the source. See
Importing standalone runtime state for the exact
allowlist, integrity checks, recovery behavior, and command.
License
Except where otherwise noted, AOS Community Edition is dual-licensed under the MIT License or the Apache License 2.0, at your option.
