# DOS — the Dispatch Operating System (dos-kernel)

> Catch your AI agents when they lie about what they shipped. DOS is a small,
> deterministic kernel that referees fleets of autonomous agents: `dos verify`
> answers "did the agent actually do it?" from git evidence (never the agent's
> self-report), `dos arbitrate` stops two agents from colliding on the same
> files, and `dos refuse` says no with a machine-actionable reason. Install:
> `pip install dos-kernel` (the import name is `dos`; the bare `dos` package on
> PyPI is an unrelated squatter — never install that).

DOS works on any plain git repository with zero configuration: no plan files,
no database, no API key, no LLM. The kernel is deterministic Python 3.11+ with
one runtime dependency (PyYAML), MIT-licensed. It is a referee, not an
orchestrator — it runs beside whatever already drives your agents. Enforcement
hooks ship for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, and Claude
Cowork (`dos init --hooks <host>`); an MCP server (`dos-mcp`) serves the same
verdicts to any MCP host; cookbook recipes cover LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen,
and the OpenAI/Claude Agents SDKs. Every verdict is also an exit code, so a CI
job or an agent loop can gate on it directly.

## Start here

- [llms-full.txt](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/llms-full.txt): every document below (outside Optional) concatenated — fetch one file, get the whole story
- [README](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/README.md): the full story, shallow to deep — what DOS catches, the 60-second demo, who it is for
- [AGENTS.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/AGENTS.md): orientation written for an AI agent — build/test commands, the consumer-moves table, the rules a change must satisfy
- [FAQ](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/FAQ.md): direct answers to the questions that lead here — verifying agent claims, stopping collisions, detecting spinning loops
- [DOS and the alternatives](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/ALTERNATIVES.md): how DOS relates to eval platforms, framework guardrails, Temporal, in-toto, and plain CI — what each does well, and when NOT to use DOS
- [Quickstart](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/QUICKSTART.md): five minutes, hand-typed, every line real output
- [Install](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/INSTALL.md): the full matrix — pip, uv, pipx, WSL, the MCP extra

## The kernel

- [Architecture](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/ARCHITECTURE.md): the per-module map — every verdict, its design lineage, and the byte-clean argument for each leaf
- [Architecture contract](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/CLAUDE.md): the layering rules (mechanism in the kernel, policy in drivers) and the litmus tests that enforce them
- [Extending DOS](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/HACKING.md): the plugin seams — judges, dialects, notifiers, exporters, evidence sources
- [Stability policy](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/STABILITY.md): the compatibility promise — what you may depend on, the deprecation window, and what will never break
- [The .dos surface](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/DOT_DOS.md): the repo-resident state contract — policy in (dos.toml), fossils through (.dos/), verdicts out (git + verdict.json) — and why that makes every host adapter thin
- [Security](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/SECURITY.md): the threat model and the supply-chain notes (including the `dos` name squatter)

## Integrations

- [Claude Code plugin](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/claude-plugin/README.md): hooks + MCP + the skill pack, bundled for one-command install
- [MCP server](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/src/dos_mcp/README.md): the syscalls as MCP tools — JSON over stdio for Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, any MCP host
- [Fleet-framework cookbook](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/examples/playbooks/cookbook-fleet-frameworks.md): one verified recipe per framework — LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, the Agents SDKs
- [PyPI package](https://pypi.org/project/dos-kernel/): `dos-kernel` — releases, wheels, the `[mcp]`/`[tui]` extras

## Optional

- [Incident pages](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/docs/incidents/README.md): one page per real-world failure mode ("my agent said it committed, but there's no commit", …) with the command that catches it
- [Paper](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/paper/README.md): the research write-up of the verdict spine
- [Benchmarks](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/master/benchmark/README.md): fleet-horizon and the detector-evaluation harnesses
- [Release notes](https://github.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/tree/master/docs/releases): one file per version
- [Issue tracker](https://github.com/anthony-chaudhary/dos-kernel/issues): bugs and design discussions