Status: experimental / pre-alpha. Nothing here is physically qualified. The first native boot on the NVIDIA DGX Spark passed on 2026-09-24 (evidence). Since then most of the work has run in an emulator (QEMU); the C kernel has also run on a Raspberry Pi 5 (see Current state). No support, stability or compatibility promises. Expect breaking changes.
AIENOS is our own operating system kernel, built to replace Linux on the DGX Spark. It is agent-native: the agent is the control plane, and the model is never the kernel. The kernel stays small, deterministic and non-intelligent, and the agent is never the root of trust.
Firmware -> AIEN Boot -> AIEN Kernel -> AIEN Runtime -> AIEN Agent -> You
The kernel is being rewritten in C (the native/ directory) and is IMPLEMENTED / NOT QUALIFIED: all 24 emulator gates pass in the newest receipt (run at 7f0de7e on 2026-10-09, QEMU only), and scripts/ck_gates.sh now lists 26 gates, so a newer receipt is owed. It has not been booted on the DGX Spark. Its first runs on real hardware were on a Raspberry Pi 5 on 2026-10-13: a bring-up run that reached interrupts, four cores, user-mode tasks, scheduling and message passing and wrote its log to the SD card, then two runs that wrote and re-read a test region on the card's AIENOS partition (pull requests #345 and #346; the run logs are not stored in this repository). The earlier Rust kernel in crates/ is legacy and is being replaced; it is not extended. Trust-chain and encrypted-storage work (TRUST-1 and M5) is NOT_QUALIFIED, with hardware and operator steps outstanding. Do not trust any number in this file over the live documents:
- ROADMAP.md: component status (its newest status block is dated 2026-10-01)
- native/kernel/GATES.md: what each emulator gate checks
- docs/TRUST-1-M5-GATE-MATRIX.md and docs/TRUST-1-OPERATOR-STEPS.md
- docs/PLAN_AUTHORITY.md: how this repository's plans relate to the whole-system plan in aien-architecture
AIENOS owns the trusted operating substrate. omega (the C reaction runtime and compiler) runs on top of it, physics holds machine realization (FORGE), and aien-architecture is the authority for status and sequencing. An optional compatibility island (for example Linux with vendor drivers) may sit beside AIENOS while native support is built; it shrinks over time.
- Sovereignty: no outside organization is required to boot the machine, access your data, authenticate you, authorize the agent, build the trusted core, recover, change models, move hardware or keep operating.
- Open trusted base: boot, kernel, memory, scheduling, storage, cryptography, identity, AEGIS, capability enforcement, update verification and recovery build from inspectable source, offline, with a reproducible toolchain.
- Fastest thing possible: close to the metal, measured, with evidence.
- Free inside reversible state; explicit authorization at irreversible boundaries.
Language rule: Rust is scaffolding, Omega is the destination, and C or assembly stay only where hardware, boot, ABI or measurement justifies them (aien-architecture ADR 0024, which supersedes the old "C is the target, no new Rust" rule). No Python, no CUDA toolkit, no CUDA-shaped APIs, no systemd or Linux init in boot, services or tooling. Dependencies in the trusted base are rare and built offline.
The C kernel needs only gcc, binutils, make and a shell. Host tests need nothing else.
make -C native/kernel test # C kernel host tests
make -C native/kernel sanitize # same under ASan and UBSan
make -C native/capability test # capability authority (production ABI; docs/CAPABILITY_ABI.md)
bash scripts/cap_abi_isolation_test.sh # C and Rust capability ABIs stay separate
make -C native/store test mutants # torn-write-safe Store recordThe emulator gates need qemu-system-aarch64 and the AAVMF firmware (Ubuntu packages: qemu-system-arm, qemu-efi-aarch64):
bash scripts/ck_gates.sh # runs the C gates, writes a content-addressed receipt; refuses a dirty tree; its child scripts take a gate lock and report NOT_RUN while another gate run holds it or the machine quiet flag is set
bash scripts/ck_pi5_build_check.sh # builds the Raspberry Pi 5 image and checks the default image carries none of it (build only; the Pi image cannot boot in QEMU)The legacy Rust workspace is still checked by bash scripts/verify_all.sh (needs a Rust toolchain with the aarch64-unknown-uefi and aarch64-unknown-none targets) until it is retired. Anything that needs the real DGX Spark is labelled needs-hardware and is run by maintainers.
Start with issues labelled good first issue or emulator-ok: they need no special hardware. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first. Open pull requests against main (protected; five checks must pass: Analyze (c-cpp), Analyze (actions), crumb, AIEN Verification and workflow files accepted) and lead with the commands you ran and their output. Questions go in Discussions. Report vulnerabilities privately through GitHub security advisories.
Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE and NOTICE. Contact: [email protected].