Your Linux sysadmin co-pilot. Plain language in. Typed plan out. You approve. Daemon executes.
What SysKnife does
You describe a task in plain language. SysKnife asks an LLM to turn it into a typed plan — a list of named actions with formal risk levels. You review the plan, approve it, and the daemon executes it step by step with live output and automatic rollback on failure.
$ sysknife "install neovim and make sure it starts on login"
Plan (2 steps)
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
1 AddLayeredPackage neovim risk: high
2 SetServiceEnabled neovim.service risk: medium
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Approve? [y/N]
The AI cannot run a shell command. It can only propose typed actions. The daemon is the only process that touches your system — and only after you say yes.
Why not just paste the shell command the AI gives you?
Because you find out what it did after. There is no record, no rollback, and no way to verify the AI proposed the minimal change rather than a sledgehammer.
SysKnife gives you:
- Typed actions — not shell strings.
AddLayeredPackage neovimnotrpm-ostree install neovim && ... - Risk levels — Low (read-only), Medium (reversible), High (irreversible, access-control, or reboot-required)
- Preview before execution — see the exact commands before they run
- Automatic rollback — if a high-risk action fails, the daemon reverses what it can
- Immutable audit trail — every execution is Ed25519-signed and hash-chained
How it works
┌─────────────────┐ plan ┌──────────────────┐ approve ┌─────────────────┐
│ sysknife-brain │ ────────► │ sysknife-shell │ ────────► │ sysknife-daemon │
│ (unprivileged) │ │ (approval gate) │ │ (root, locked) │
└─────────────────┘ └──────────────────┘ └─────────────────┘
LLM + tools you review here executes + audits
| Component | Privilege | Job |
|---|---|---|
| brain | none | Talks to the LLM, proposes a typed plan |
| shell | user | Shows you the plan, collects your approval |
| daemon | root | Executes approved actions, writes the audit log |
The brain proposes but cannot touch the system. The daemon executes but cannot be reached without an approved plan.
Fastest path: use via your AI coding tool (MCP)
MCP is how most people use SysKnife in 2026 — it's the dominant way AI tools talk to real systems, and Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex CLI all support it. One command wires it up:
npx sysknife-setup
The demo above shows the whole loop: plan in chat, approve in a terminal, execute with a one-time receipt. See the MCP Server guide for full setup and the approval-gate hook.
Prefer the terminal? The CLI is a first-class path
No IDE and no MCP client — the same planner, approval gate, and Ed25519 audit chain, driven straight from your shell. This is a fully supported way to run SysKnife, not an afterthought.
ℹ️ Distro support
All three Ubuntu LTS releases have a committed live-VM run of the 79-story Ubuntu suite, in
tests/evidence/story-runs/: 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04 all at 79/79. Each run has a replay twin that reproduces it, serving every call with zero misses. Five Debian-only actions still have no story. Fedora Atomic is supported by the rpm-ostree action family, but a current Silverblue 44 VM run is a release gate. Plain Fedora remains experimental until thednfaction family ships. See Distro Support for the full matrix.
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential # Rust stable and a C compiler
git clone https://github.com/lacs-project/sysknife
cd sysknife && make build && sudo make install # ~7-12 min: about 400 crates
sudo systemctl enable --now sysknife-daemon
sysknife "show disk usage"
For prebuilt binaries instead of a build, run npx sysknife-setup (Node 18+).
See the canonical Quick Start.
No API key needed if you have Ollama running locally — SysKnife auto-detects it. See Quick Start.
Also: a desktop GUI (a distant third option)
There is an experimental desktop GUI (sysknife-shell, built with Tauri) that
wraps the same plan → approve → execute loop in a window. It is the least
frequently maintained surface — a distant third behind the MCP integration and
the CLI — so reach for it only if you specifically want a graphical approval
flow.
Status
190 typed actions · 1,845 Rust tests + 72 frontend tests · MIT
SysKnife is the reference implementation of the LACS specification — a CC0 public-domain protocol for AI agents that operate at the Linux system level.