Configuration that unifies instead of overwriting
Aontu is JSON plus a lattice. Two documents do not override each other, they unify: the result is the most specific value that satisfies both, or an error naming the contradiction. That makes a definition checkable, queryable and safe to change — by a person or by an agent.
A schema, a default and data — in one notation
Every JSON document is an Aontu document. Then you add what JSON
cannot say: that port must be an integer, that it
defaults to 8080, that host is a string.
Unification combines all of it in one operation.
A conflicting fact — a second port: "high", or a
port: 1.5 — is a precise error at the line that caused
it, not a silent wrong answer.
port: *8080 | integer
host: string
host: "localhost"{
"host": "localhost",
"port": 8080
}Eleven verbs, in two implementations
The same command line ships in TypeScript and in Go, held to one
language-agnostic test suite so the two cannot drift. Each verb answers
as JSON with --format json, which is what makes the toolkit
usable by something other than a person.
vet- does this data satisfy that truth?
get- what does it say at a path?
why- why does that value hold, and who set it?
set- change one value in an overlay, or in place
subsume- is this schema a widening of that one?
breaking- which changes break an earlier version?
diff- what changed between two documents?
trim- which entries are redundant?
relations- run the declared identity checks
hash- pin what a document means, not how it is spelled
mod- maintain a dependency closure
Every flag and exit code is in the
API and CLI reference. With no file,
aontu starts a REPL.
Built for agents as much as for readers
An agent does not read a configuration by evaluating the whole thing into one blob. It holds identifiers, retrieves task-sized slices, asks why a value holds, and patches by path. Aontu answers each of those directly — and this site serves the same content as markdown at every URL, for anything that would rather not parse HTML.
-
Ask, don't evaluate
aontu get $.services.authretrieves one slice;--keyslists what exists;whynames every contribution to a value and the line that wrote it. -
A checkable contract
vetbranches its exit code — valid, invalid, incomplete, or the schema itself is unusable — so a repair loop knows which thing to fix. -
An MCP server
aontu-mcpruns locally over stdio and answers with the identical reports the CLI prints. No hosting, no key, no network. -
A published grammar
GBNF and Lark files ship in the package for constrained decoding, held by a test to accept every canonical form the suite produces.
Install
npm install aontu@0.52.1go install github.com/aontu-lang/aontu/go/cmd/aontu@latestMIT licensed. Source, issues and the design record are on GitHub.