🌳 Open Access Kit (OAK)

A portable, offline-first collection of privacy tools and educational content for people facing censorship or surveillance.

What is OAK?

Downloading Tor Browser or Tails OS requires internet access — exactly what may be restricted for people who need them most. OAK solves this by pre-packaging these tools onto USB thumbdrives that can be physically shared and replicated, no internet required.

OAK is a Go CLI that automates the quarterly update cycle: detect latest upstream versions, download everything, verify cryptographic signatures, assemble a tiered image, and package it for distribution.

Quick Start

Download a Pre-Built Image

Pre-built images are published on the Releases page. Choose the tier that fits your USB drive:

Tier	Drive Size	Contents
S	4 GB	Tor Browser + guides + Orbot
M	16 GB	+ Tails OS + OnionShare + Kiwix + ZIM content
L	32 GB	+ expanded ZIM reference library

Build Your Own

go install github.com/open-access-kit/oak/cmd/oak@latest
oak build --tier M

What's Inside

Content	S	M	L
Tor Browser (all platforms)	Yes	Yes	Yes
Educational guides	Yes	Yes	Yes
Onion sites directory	Yes	Yes	Yes
Tails OS	-	Yes	Yes

How to Use OAK

If someone handed you an OAK USB drive:

1. Open README.txt at the root of the drive
2. Navigate to software/tor-browser/ and find your operating system
3. Install Tor Browser and connect to the Tor network
4. Browse guides/ for privacy and censorship circumvention guides
5. Visit docs/index.html for the full companion website (works offline)

Building from Source

Prerequisites: Go 1.22+, rsync, gpg

git clone https://github.com/stazelabs/open-access-kit
cd oak
make build

# Run the full pipeline
./oak build --tier S --dry-run      # preview what would happen
./oak build --tier S                 # actually build

See ARCHITECTURE.md for full architecture documentation.

Release Schedule

OAK follows a quarterly release cadence. Releases are named by quarter and year:

• Q126 = Q1 2026
• Q226 = Q2 2026
• etc.

Each release picks up the latest stable versions of all included tools.

Contributing

• Adding a source: If it fits an existing source type (rsync, git, http, local), add a block to oak.yaml — no Go code required.
• Educational content: Add Markdown files to content/guides/. They are rendered to standalone HTML at build time.
• New source types: Implement the source.Source interface in internal/source/.

See AGENTS.md for guidance if you're using AI coding tools.

License

• Code (Go source, tooling): GPL v3
• Content (content/): CC BY-SA 4.0

GPL v3 ensures any modified version of OAK must remain open source. CC BY-SA 4.0 ensures educational guides can be freely shared and adapted with attribution.