FAQ

Questions, answered plainly.

• What is ai-engineering?

  ai-engineering is an open-source CLI that puts guardrails under the AI coding agent you already run. One compiled binary, ai-eng, installs a repository contract, denies a destructive tool call before it executes, and writes a receipt for every execution. Nothing is hosted: the payload is the binary, and the state is versioned files in your repository and in ~/.ai-engineering/. The guards run in the hot path your harness already had, so the work speeds up without an extra token bill.
• Which agents and editors does it support?

  Eight, and they are not equal, which is why each one carries a tier. Core: Claude Code, Oh My Pi, OpenCode and Pi. Experimental: Cursor and Codex CLI — they deny, but Cursor cannot rewrite tool output and Codex substitutes the whole input. Best-effort: Copilot, whose cloud filesystem keeps no receipts. Skills-only: Zed, which never runs our chain and denies through its own tool permissions.
• How do I install it?

  Bun 1.4 or later, then bun add -g ai-engineering@latest && ai-eng init (with npm: npm install -g ai-engineering@latest && ai-eng init). init is idempotent and writes the contract for the repository it runs in. ai-eng doctor then runs the health checks and fires one real adversarial payload at the guard chain.
• Is there a hosted control plane?

  No. There is no service to run and nothing to sign up for. The binary is the payload; the policies, the skills and the receipts are files you own, and ai-eng update rewrites them from the binary you already installed, with no network at all.
• Does it send my code anywhere?

  No code, no prompt and no receipt leaves the machine. The one outbound read is an anonymous daily registry version check, cached for 24 hours and silent when offline; it is off with notices = false in config.toml or AI_ENG_NO_UPDATE_NOTICES=1.
• What is the license?

  Apache-2.0. The full source is on GitHub at arcasilesgroup/ai-engineering.
• How do I keep it current?

  ai-eng upgrade shows you the changelog, asks, and hands the install to bun or npm. ai-eng update is the other half: it rewrites ai-eng's files from the binary you already have, with no network, and reports what it did — so a run that changed nothing says so.
• How do I leave?

  ai-eng uninstall. "This project" sweeps every file the lock says ai-eng owns and keeps AGENTS.md, DECISIONS.md, spec.html and plan.html — your four contracts stay yours. "Everything" also removes ~/.ai-engineering/ (the global skill canon and mirrors) and asks twice before doing it.