aict — Coreutils for AI Agents

Unix coreutils rebuilt for AI agents — structured XML/JSON output, zero parsing, zero ambiguity.

What is aict?

aict is a single Go binary that reimplements ~22 Unix CLI tools (ls, grep, cat, find, stat, diff, etc.) with structured XML/JSON output designed for AI coding agents.

Every time an AI agent runs ls, grep, or cat, it wastes tokens parsing human-readable output. aict gives you the same tools you already know, but the output is structured. No parsing. No regex. Just data.

What You Get

$ aict ls src/
<ls timestamp="1234567890" total_entries="3">
  <file name="main.go" path="src/main.go" absolute="/project/src/main.go"
        size_bytes="2048" size_human="2.0 KiB" modified="1234567890" modified_ago_s="3600"
        language="go" mime="text/x-go" binary="false"/>
  <file name="utils.go" path="src/utils.go" absolute="/project/src/utils.go"
        size_bytes="1024" size_human="1.0 KiB" modified="1234567890" modified_ago_s="3600"
        language="go" mime="text/x-go" binary="false"/>
  <directory name="internal" path="src/internal"/>
</ls>

Every field is labeled. Every path is absolute. Every timestamp is a Unix epoch integer. The agent knows exactly what it is looking at.

Quick Start

# Install
go install github.com/synseqack/aict@latest

# Use it
aict ls src/
aict grep "func" . -r
aict cat main.go

Key Features

Navigate This Site

Why This Exists

We built AI coding agents that needed to read files, search codebases, and compare directories. Standard CLI tools are designed for humans. Every parsing attempt was brittle.

This gives you the same capabilities, but the output is unambiguous. The agent does not guess. It reads.