Product CLI

aos is the product command. It owns the product home, Community Edition composition, health projection, version identity, and update policy. Lower-level operator commands use the Astrid engine bundled in the same AOS release, so the complete runtime command set remains available through one CLI.

Product-owned commands

Command	Behavior
aos --help	product help and delegation boundary
aos --version	AOS calendar-SemVer version, such as 2026.1.1
aos status [--json]	read typed local runtime status without invoking the runtime CLI
aos serve-health	bind the narrow loopback health endpoint
aos update	update the AOS product and bundled runtime together from a signed channel or exact version

aos self-update remains an alias for aos update. aos distro is also product-owned and refuses replacement of the Unicity CE composition.

The public installer applies the embedded Community Edition composition and wires the selected host plugins. There is no separate activation step. A developer who deliberately wants another distribution uses standalone Astrid Runtime outside the product installation.

Delegated commands

Every other command is executed by ~/.aos/runtime/bin/astrid with ASTRID_HOME=~/.aos/runtime and the product workspace state directory set only in the child process. This includes runtime/operator surfaces such as daemon operation, capsule inspection, diagnostics, and agent execution. The product-owned aos status remains the supported local status projection; it is not delegated to the runtime command of the same name.

aos doctor
aos start
aos logs
aos capsule list
aos run

The exact delegated command set is the command set of the Astrid Runtime version pinned into that AOS release. aos does not copy the implementation and should not maintain a second parser for every runtime flag.

Product home override

Use AOS_HOME to isolate a development or CI installation:

export AOS_HOME=/absolute/path/to/aos-home
aos status

Do not export ASTRID_HOME globally as an AOS setup step. The wrapper owns that child-process setting, which prevents product state from colliding with a standalone runtime.

Exit codes and automation

Product commands return zero on success and nonzero on validation, health-service, update, or child-runtime failure. Automation should consume the exit code and structured HTTP contracts rather than matching human help text.

aos serve-health binds only 127.0.0.1:8765. It is a long-running service, not a one-shot health check; probe it with GET /v1/runtime/health.