@akasecurity/cli — aka

AKA Security — We secure agent harnesses at the source.

The aka command-line tool for AI Traffic Control (ai-tc) — an open-source, local-first control plane for coding agents. It inspects and governs the traffic of an agent session (prompts, tool calls, responses, file reads), scans each event against your rule packs, and records everything to a local SQLite store at ~/.aka/data/aka.db.

Detection, enforcement, and your store run on your machine. There's no account and no backend unless you attach to one, and nothing leaves your computer to be scanned. Three narrow paths do reach the network. Two of them carry none of your data: the version check that runs after a command, and the registry lookups and installs that aka plugins, aka update and aka check-updates drive. The third is aka attach, which is off until you run it and then forwards activity on purpose.[^egress]

If your organization runs its own AKA deployment, aka attach --url <https-url> registers this machine against it — after which activity that deployment is entitled to see is forwarded, and the policy it sets is enforced (it can raise enforcement beyond your own settings, never lower it). That is opt-in and off until you run it: aka status says what a machine is attached to, and aka detach ends it.

[^egress]: Scanning, enforcement and your store are local — there's no AKA server, and no account unless you attach to one. Three narrow paths reach the network. Two are child processes and carry none of the content of your prompts, tool calls or findings. The update notice runs after a command when stdout is a terminal; when its cache is stale it refreshes in the background with three npm view lookups — this package (@akasecurity/cli), plus the two marketplace plugin packages @akasecurity/ai-tc-claude-code and @akasecurity/ai-tc-codex, which are looked up whether or not you have them installed. So what the registry — and whatever proxy your npm configuration points at — learns is which packages this machine asked about, not which it runs. The notice is on by default, and --no-update-check skips it for a single invocation. Second, the commands that look up or install software — aka plugins install, aka update and aka check-updates — shell out to npm, claude or codex, which reaches the network the way those tools normally do. aka check-updates only reads: it issues the same npm view lookups and installs nothing. aka detections is not one of them: it lists packs and applies pack updates from your local store, and opens no connection of its own. The third is neither: aka attach is the only path where this CLI's own source opens a connection — through @akasecurity/remote, the one package permitted a socket — and the only one that carries your activity, which is the point of attaching. It is opt-in, does nothing until both an endpoint and an access key are on disk and name the same host, and aka detach ends it. Separately, and not one of the three: aka <name> dispatches git-style to an aka-<name> program from your own PATH (POSIX only; a built-in always wins). That program is yours, not ours — ai-tc does not bundle, pin or verify it — so whether it reaches the network is its business, not something this project can describe. The one path that sends your data to a MODEL belongs to the Claude Code plugin rather than to this CLI: its opt-in /aka:setup calibration sends what an initial history scan finds to the model API to be rated, behind two separate opt-ins, and the plugin README states that payload field by field.

The local store keeps your prompts and tool calls verbatim apart from the spans a rule masks, and file permissions — not encryption — are all that protect it. See Data at rest for which files it spans and what holds on Windows.

Install

npm install -g @akasecurity/cli

Or use the bootstrap installer (downloads the self-contained binary — no Node.js required):

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akasecurity/ai-tc/bin-latest/tools/installer/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/akasecurity/ai-tc/bin-latest/tools/installer/install.ps1 | iex

Requires Node.js 24+ (the CLI uses the built-in node:sqlite).

Quick start

aka init         # scaffold the local store at ~/.aka
aka dashboard    # open the local web dashboard over your store

What it does

| Command | What it does | | ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | aka init | Create the local store and settings under ~/.aka. | | aka dashboard | Launch the local web dashboard (findings, policies, exceptions). | | aka scan | Scan working-tree source files for security flaws. | | aka detections | List installed detection packs and available updates. | | aka exception | Manage exact-value exceptions that let a specific match through. | | aka stats | Show detection activity and token/cost summaries from the store. | | aka plugins | Optional hub to install agent plugins (e.g. Claude Code). | | aka extension | Install the browser-extension bridge (install / status). |

Run aka --help for the full command list.

External subcommands

Any other command dispatches, git-style, to an executable named aka-<command> on your PATH (POSIX only; built-ins always win). For example, with aka-claude-tools installed, aka claude launches the hardened Claude Code profile via its aka-claude launcher.

The Claude Code plugin

The CLI gives you the dashboard, store, and scanning. To actually intercept a Claude Code session you also need the AKA plugin, which installs from the Claude Code plugin marketplace (not npm). With the CLI installed:

aka plugins install claude-code

This drives Claude Code to add the plugin for you (or prints the /plugin commands to run). See the installation guide for both components.

The browser extension (ChatGPT + Claude.ai web chat)

The CLI also ships a Chrome extension that scans messages in ChatGPT and Claude.ai web chat before they are sent, recording into the same local store over Chrome's native messaging (no server, no open port). Set it up with:

aka extension install   # registers the native-messaging host with Chrome
aka extension status    # verify the wiring

Then load the extension in Chrome: open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, click "Load unpacked", and select the directory the install command prints. The native host needs a Node.js runtime on the machine.

Docs

Full documentation, architecture, and the built-in detection catalog live at akasecurity.github.io/ai-tc-docs.

License

Apache-2.0