awvision

Docs · Source · pip install awvision · The Aither World

The Aither World is an operating system for agents — a Linux you can hand to one, the runtimes it works in, and the tools it works with. awnix is the Linux underneath it; awvision is one of its 55 bricks — each installs on its own, runs offline, and needs no account.

Start here: Ask a question about an image and get an answer.

Ask questions about images using a vision-capable model.

What it does

awvision is a lightweight client for vision-capable, OpenAI-compatible LLM services. Send an image and a question, get an answer.

The contract: Ask a question about an image and get an answer.

Installation

pip install -e .

Or with dev dependencies:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Usage

Ask a question about an image

awvision ask image.png "What is in this image?"

Describe an image

awvision describe image.jpg

Compare two images

awvision compare image1.png image2.png

Configuration

Set environment variables to customize the endpoint and model:

export AWVISION_URL=http://100.64.0.38:8124
export AWVISION_MODEL=gemma4-12b

The defaults point at the AitherOS fleet's vision lane — gemma4-12b on the DGX Spark (claude_bridge.yaml). Point AWVISION_URL at any other OpenAI-compatible vision endpoint to override.

Or pass them as options:

awvision --endpoint http://100.64.0.38:8124 --model gemma4-12b ask image.png "What's this?"

Self-test

Run the self-tests to verify awvision is working correctly:

awvision --self-test

This will:

• Test image loading and encoding
• Verify media type detection
• Check endpoint configuration
• Validate error handling

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• A vision-capable LLM service (e.g., OpenAI-compatible API)
• The service must support the image_url content block format

How it works

awvision:

1. Loads the image file and encodes it as base64
2. Wraps it in an OpenAI-compatible chat message with image_url format
3. Sends it to the configured vision service
4. Returns the model's response

Important: Empty response detection

If a text-only model receives an image, it typically returns HTTP 200 with an empty response. awvision detects this and raises a clear error:

ERROR: Model 'gpt-4-vision' at http://localhost:8150 returned empty content.
This indicates the model does not support vision or cannot process image_url content blocks.
Verify that:
  1. The model 'gpt-4-vision' is vision-capable
  2. The endpoint supports the image_url format
  3. The image was properly encoded as a data URL

This prevents silent failures where an empty response looks like a successful query.

API

For programmatic use:

from awvision import ask_vision, describe_image, compare_images

# Ask a question
answer = ask_vision("image.png", "What color is this?")
print(answer)

# Describe an image
description = describe_image("image.jpg")
print(description)

# Compare two images
comparison = compare_images("image1.png", "image2.png")
print(comparison)

Error handling

awvision provides clear error messages for common issues:

• FileNotFoundError: Image file not found
• IOError: Image file is empty or unreadable
• RuntimeError: Vision service is unavailable, model has no vision, or response is empty

All error messages include guidance on what to check.

Testing

Run the test suite:

pytest tests/ -v

Supported image formats

• PNG (image/png)
• JPEG (image/jpeg)
• GIF (image/gif)
• WebP (image/webp)

License

MIT

The aw family

Standalone tools that share one idea: replace something you would otherwise have to trust with something you can check.

Each installs on its own, works offline, and needs no account.

	instead of trusting	you check
awdk	a framework's idea of how your agents should run	one loop you can read, pointed at a backend you already pay for
awskills	that an agent knows your procedure	the procedure written down, versioned, and loadable by any agent
awpack	that the pack you want shipped inside somebody's SDK, under whatever licence that SDK happens to carry	the pack as its own versioned artifact, with its own licence, that any agent runtime can install
awm	that memory stayed in its lane	tenant:user:project scopes, so a write cannot cross a boundary
awdesk	that the agent is somewhere behind a browser tab	a tray icon, a face on your desktop, and the decision card that pops when it needs you
awnode	a vendor's cloud with every prompt	a local gateway routing to backends you chose
awgraph	that grep found everything	an AST + tree-sitter call graph an agent can traverse
awgit	that no one else is editing this file	a lease, refused at commit time if you do not hold it
awdelphi	one agent's confident take on a decision	the round trace, the anonymity, and who dissents
awtoll	that your tooling is saving you context	the measured token cost of each tool call, and what the alternative cost
awseal	that the artifact came from who you think	an Ed25519 seal — the key that verifies is not the key that forges
awshare	that the download is intact	content-addressed bundles, verified on fetch
awnest	that there is a person on the other end	a verdict with evidence, where "we could not tell" is not "yes"
awrena	a leaderboard someone can edit, and votes nobody counted	a scored duel with both answers kept, and a result bound to them
awnboard	a share link anyone who sees it can use	an invitation addressed to one person, for one gate, revocable
awnix	that the box is what you left it as	an immutable image you built, with atomic rollback
awrecover	that the restore worked	a restore that fully lands or does not land at all
awstorage	a du you ran last month, and a peers file that says 3 TB free	an inventory snapshot per node with a diff since the last one, and each tree classified re-fetchable or not
awrelay	a SaaS in the middle of your agents	findings, alerts and coordination over your own transport
awask	that anyone read the paragraph where you asked	the ask itself, with a button that steers the session that raised it
awmail	a mailbox somebody else can read	mail your agents send and receive over your own server
awfind	one vendor's idea of the web	results from whichever providers you configured
awbrowse	that the page said what you were told	the render, the DOM and the requests it made
awvoice	that a cloud vendor may hold your audio	a transcript and a wav from a service you host
awvision (you are here)	a filename and a caption somebody wrote	what a model actually reports about the pixels
awscreen	a selector that was true when the page was written	the elements actually rendered, by what they look like
gawbbonet	the model to keep a 300-message campaign coherent by itself	campaign facts recalled from scoped memory you can list and edit
aitherkvcache	a vendor's quantisation defaults	sub-byte KV cache kernels you can benchmark yourself
awrtifact	a hand-rolled split script and a hand-edited worker manifest	byte-verified parts in a release, served with Range + CORS, sizes asserted by a live gate
AitherZero	a pile of scripts nobody has numbered	numbered, discoverable automation with declarative playbooks
AitherConnect	what a page tells your browser to do	a federated search and desktop bridge you host
awreason	a confident paragraph	the phases it went through, and every tool call it made to get there
awrecurse	that everything you pasted in was actually read	which slices it opened, and what it concluded from each
awprism	the first explanation that fits	the ranked alternatives, and the observation that separates them
awrepl	what the agent believes the value is	the value, printed from the live session
awresearch	a summary of pages nobody opened	every claim against the source it came from
awfocus	twelve terminal tabs and a bad memory	one command that names every session, finds any transcript, and opens or steers the one you want
awgym	that a world model learned anything from the games it saw	transitions captured from real play, fed back, and the retrodiction score falling on grids it never saw
awpredict	a model because it trained without erroring	its prediction against a self-updating lookup, on the rows that are actually novel
awsh	that you already know the name of the command	what it decided your line meant, before it acts on it
awrise	that a scheduled agent ran at all, and ran exactly once	a durable record of every wake -- fired, skipped, overlapped or timed out -- each with its reason
awkno	that the docs site is up, or that you remember the family	the whole ecosystem in your terminal, with no network at all
awwall	that a service only talks to the hosts you think it talks to	an explicit egress allowlist, where a denial names the rule that denied it
awembed	a general-purpose embedder that has never seen your code	a held-out split of whole directories, scored teacher vs student vs int8
awtax	a closed tax app's sealed file you can never read again	a plain, provider-neutral schema of every figure, with the page it came from
awsettings	that you will remember to re-approve the same thing on every box you work from	one profile, unioned rather than overwritten, with the credentials left behind
awavatar	a cloud 3D vendor's opaque task id	a manifest with a sha256, a licence and a rig-audit verdict per file

awnix is the ground floor — A Linux you can hand to an agent — immutable base, capabilities included.

The Aitherium ecosystem

Every repository here is public. Each publishes an aither-manifest.json beside its page, so any surface can read every sibling's — the network is browsable from any node in it.

repo	what it is	pages
awdk	Build AI agent fleets — 3 lines, any backend, local or cloud	docs
awskills	Portable agent skills — self-contained procedures an agent loads on demand	docs
awpack	First-party agent packs — the ones we build, versioned and installable on their own	docs
awm	A portable, scoped agent memory	docs
awdesk	Aither World Desk -- the desktop body of AitherOS Online: tray, avatars, decision cards, the Living Desktop as an overlay	docs
awnode	A lightweight local gateway — bridges your apps to the AI backends you chose	docs
awrun	A priority-aware queue and dispatcher for agentic runs and ad-hoc CI builds. It also judges whether the runner pool is big enough for the queue it is draining, and can ask a host to grow it -- reserving capacity is zero-sum, so a saturated pool needs more of it, not a different share of it	docs
awgraph	A semantic code graph for agents — AST + tree-sitter, call graphs	docs
awgit	Semantic version control on top of git — edit-ops and leases	docs
awdelphi	Anonymous multi-round expert panels — a converged answer with a trace	docs
awtoll	What every tool call costs you in context, measured from your own transcripts	docs
awseal	Sign an artifact so a stranger can verify it	docs
awshare	Publish an artifact and fetch it back verified	docs
awdit	An append-only audit trail whose gaps are DETECTABLE	docs
awbac	Role-based access control that fails closed and explains itself	docs
awiam	Who is this caller? A directory and session store that fails honestly	docs
awtunnel	Reach a service that has no public address	docs
awnest	Prove there is a human before you let them into the nest	docs
awrena	Put two agents head to head and get a verdict you can check	docs
awnboard	A front gate you can put in front of anything, and hand someone the key to	docs
awnix	A Linux you can hand to an agent — immutable base, capabilities included	docs
awrecover	Labelled snapshots with an all-or-nothing restore	docs
awstorage	Every drive on every node, indexed, classified and diffed -- so you can see what you own before you delete it	docs
awrelay	Portable agent messaging — findings, alerts, coordination	docs
awask	Your agent asks you a question — and acts on your answer	docs
awmail	Give an agent an email address — send, and actually receive	docs
awnet	The agentic web — agents host a mesh, and agents join one	docs
awfind	A portable search client — query, results, ranking	docs
awbrowse	A portable browser client — navigate, console, network, DOM, screenshot	docs
awvoice	Hear and speak — transcribe audio, synthesize a voice	docs
awvision (you are here)	See an image — describe it, ask it a question, compare two	docs
awscreen	See this machine — what is on screen, and where to click it	docs
awknowledge	How to run a coding agent so the result survives — the laws, with evidence	docs
gawbbonet	GobboNet campaigns with a real agent brain — scoped memory, graph recall	docs
aitherkvcache	Near-optimal KV cache quantization for LLM inference — sub-byte compression	docs
awrtifact	Deliberately chunk artifacts into GitHub release assets — the productized aitherkvcache mirror lane	docs
AitherZero	PowerShell 7+ automation framework — numbered, self-describing scripts	docs
AitherConnect	Browser extension — federated AI search, page context, and the Living OS overlay	docs
awreason	A portable reasoning client — sessions, phases, thoughts, and the chain that produced the answer	docs
awrecurse	Answer a question over a context far larger than the window — recursively, with the trace kept	docs
awprism	Turn a failure into ranked hypotheses — and say what would confirm each one	docs
awrepl	A REPL an agent can actually use — state that survives between turns	docs
awresearch	Ask a research question, get a cited report you can check	docs
awfocus	See, search and steer every Claude session from one command	docs
awgym	An ARC training gym — a game a world model can watch, and six roles that play through it	docs
awpredict	Predict what your environment does next, and how surprised you were	docs
awsh	Your terminal answers you -- type a question where a command would go	docs
awrise	Wake an agent on a schedule, let it do one thing, and put it back to sleep	docs
awkno	The man page for the Aither World — every brick, stack and law, offline	docs
awwall	Say what a workload may reach, and watch everything else fail closed	docs
awembed	Train an embedding model that knows your corpus, and prove it beats the big one	docs
awtax	Turn any tax PDF -- returns, W-2, 1099, statements, even scans -- into structured data you can check	docs
awflow	A deterministic workflow runtime — chain agent calls with journal replay and budget control	docs
awsettings	Your agent's permissions and config, following you to the next machine	docs
awavatar	One character spec in, a rigged, animated, multi-style avatar pack out	docs

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