aeon

Set up and run an Aeon agent instance — get started from scratch, pick which skills to turn on or install more from packs, reschedule or change what runs, edit what an existing skill does, fix a skill that isn't firing, set the STRATEGY.md north star and soul/ voice, turn a coding-agent chat into a scheduled Aeon skill, and mine past coding-agent conversations for recurring work worth automating as a skill. Use when the user mentions Aeon, aeon.yml, an Aeon skill / instance / routine / pack, asks to schedule, enable, edit, or debug an agent that runs on a cron, or asks what of their repeated/manual work Aeon could take over.

Aeon is an agent that runs on the user's own GitHub repo via Actions. A skill is a Markdown file (skills/<name>/SKILL.md); aeon.yml says which ones run and when.

Pick the mode they're asking for:

1 · Start	No instance yet, or set one up from scratch
2 · Reschedule	Change times, cadence, or what a skill focuses on
3 · Unblock	"It didn't run" / "nothing happened"
4 · Chat → skill	Turn what we just did into a scheduled skill
5 · Edit a skill	Change what an existing skill does
6 · What to turn on	Pick skills, browse packs, install more
7 · Strategy & voice	STRATEGY.md and soul/ — the north star and the tone
8 · Mine history → skill	"What of my repeated work could Aeon do for me?" — surface it from past coding-agent chats

Preflight (every mode)

1. Find the repo: current dir → gh repo set-default → ask. Clone it if it isn't local.

2. Confirm gh points at THEIR instance, before any command that writes.

   bash

   gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner
   

   If that prints aeonfun/aeon and they aren't working on upstream itself, stop and run gh repo set-default <owner>/<repo>. gh prefers an upstream remote over origin when no default is pinned, and every Aeon write (auth, secrets set, skills run, config pushes) is a gh -R <resolved> call — so it will cheerfully put their API keys on the upstream repo and dispatch runs there. It looks like success: no error, a real run id, and the skill just never fires on their instance.

3. gh auth status — everything routes through gh. If it fails, tell them to run gh auth login and stop.

4. Use the ./aeon CLI for all config writes. It preserves comments in aeon.yml and validates. Never hand-edit the YAML — with one exception: the CLI cannot create an entry for a brand-new skill (see Mode 4 step 4).

Don't trust "disabled" for a skill you just created. The read path lists skills from disk and defaults a missing aeon.yml entry to enabled: false, so "not configured" and "disabled" look identical. One command tells them apart:

bash

comm -23 <(ls skills/*/SKILL.md | cut -d/ -f2 | sort) \
         <(grep -oE '^  [a-z0-9-]+:' aeon.yml | tr -d ' :' | sort)

Anything it prints is on disk but unconfigured. Orientation — what's installed, what's on, and where everything lives: references/layout.md.

Setting any key or token: read references/secrets.md — it has every secret and repo variable with the exact page to get it from. Always set secrets with ./aeon secrets set NAME --stdin, never as a command argument.

---

Mode 1 — Start on Aeon

Goal: one real notification in their phone, fast. Do not configure a schedule first.

1. Get a repo. Ask public or private before you run anything — it changes the command, and switching later means moving the repo.

   Public (recommend this): Actions minutes are free, and upstream skill updates arrive with one command.

   bash

   gh repo fork aeonfun/aeon --clone && cd aeon
   gh repo set-default <owner>/aeon        # REQUIRED — see below
   

   Private: a fork of a public repo is always public, so a private instance is a mirror, not a fork.

   bash

   gh repo create <name> --private
   git clone --bare https://github.com/aeonfun/aeon.git
   git -C aeon.git push --mirror https://github.com/<owner>/<name>.git
   rm -rf aeon.git && git clone https://github.com/<owner>/<name>.git && cd <name>
   git remote add upstream https://github.com/aeonfun/aeon.git
   gh repo set-default <owner>/<name>      # REQUIRED — see below
   

   Say both costs out loud before they pick private: Actions minutes bill against the account quota (2,000/mo on Free — scheduled skills burn it), and updates come from git fetch upstream && git merge upstream/main instead of gh repo sync.

   Pin the default repo before any other command — both paths. Both end up with an upstream remote (gh repo fork --clone adds one for you), and with no default pinned gh prefers upstream over origin. Everything in Aeon routes through gh -R $(gh repo view …), so an unpinned checkout silently writes secrets to and dispatches runs against aeonfun/aeon instead of their instance — with no error, because the commands genuinely succeed on the wrong repo. Verify:

   bash

   gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner   # must print THEIR repo
   

   Everything after this step is identical either way.

2. Auth a model. At least one is required. Fastest is ./aeon auth --oauth (Claude Pro/Max, opens a browser), or ./aeon auth --key <key>, which detects the provider from the key prefix — sk-ant-oat (OAuth), sk-or- (OpenRouter), bk_ (Bankr), inf_ (Surplus), xai- (Grok); anything else lands in ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

   UsePod and Venice keys have no prefix and are undetectable, so a bare --key files them as a plain Anthropic key and the run fails later with a confusing auth error. They must be named:

   bash

   ./aeon auth --key <token> --provider usepod    # same for venice
   

   --dry-run prints the resolved method=… → secret … without calling gh or claude — worth running whenever the provider is in doubt.

   Don't assume they have a Claude subscription: eight providers work, including OpenRouter, Grok, and crypto-settled gateways. See "Providers and harnesses".

3. Wire one channel. Telegram is the fastest: create a bot with @BotFather, then ./aeon secrets set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN --stdin and TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID. Skip Discord/Slack/email for now — one channel is enough to prove it works.

4. Run one skill now. Pick it with Mode 6 — ask what they want handled, propose one — then ./aeon skills run <name>. Wait for it, then ./aeon runs logs <id>. They should get a Telegram message.

5. Only then, schedule it. ./aeon skills enable <name> and set a time (see Mode 2).

Good first skills: digest (topic briefing), github-monitor (their repos), heartbeat (already on by default, reports only when something needs attention).

---

Mode 2 — Reschedule / change the routine

Show them their day as a timeline in their own timezone, not a config file:

text

07:00  digest           "solana"
09:00  pr-review        your repos
18:00  heartbeat        health check

Build it from ./aeon skills ls --enabled --json. (--enabled matters: plain ls prints a SCHEDULE column for disabled skills too — that's their aeon.yml entry, not proof anything fires.) No CLI, or want the raw file? references/layout.md has grep-only equivalents. Then take plain-language edits and apply them:

They say	You do
"move the digest to 7am"	./aeon skills schedule digest "0 6 * * *"
"weekdays only"	... "0 6 * * 1-5"
"too noisy, twice a week"	... "0 6 * * 1,4"
"stop the crypto one"	./aeon skills disable token-movers
"make it about rust instead"	./aeon skills set digest --var rust

Rules:

• All cron in aeon.yml is UTC. Convert from their timezone, and say so: "7am Paris = 0 6 * * * UTC (5am in summer — want it pinned to local time?" There is no local-time option, so if DST matters, tell them which half of the year is off by an hour.

• Confirm back the next 3 fire times in their timezone after any change.

• --dry-run first on anything ambiguous, show the diff, then apply.

• Changes need a push to take effect. The CLI does it; confirm it landed.

• Then check the value came out quoted — one grep, every time:

  bash

  grep '^  <skill>:' aeon.yml
  

  The scheduler only reads schedule: "…" with double quotes. The CLI writes a new key unquoted, so an entry that had no schedule: yet comes back as schedule: 0 12 * * * and the skill is skipped forever. Details below.

Skills with schedule: workflow_dispatch are on-demand only — they never fire on cron. reactive ones fire on conditions, not time.

---

Mode 3 — Unblock

"It didn't run." Check in this order and stop at the first hit:

1. Is it on? ./aeon skills ls --enabled — is it listed?

2. Duplicate key? node scripts/validate-config.js. A repeated skill name in aeon.yml silently shadows the first one. Common after hand-edits.

3. Is it even cron? workflow_dispatch and reactive never fire on a schedule.

4. Are Actions disabled? gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/permissions. GitHub auto-disables scheduled workflows after 60 days of repo inactivity — this silently kills forks and nothing in Aeon surfaces it. Re-enable in repo Settings.

5. Is the schedule quoted? grep '^ <skill>:' aeon.yml — the value must be schedule: "0 12 * * *", with double quotes.

   text

   schedule: "0 12 * * *"   ✅ fires
   schedule: 0 12 * * *     ❌ never fires, no error anywhere
   

   scheduler.yml matches schedules with the bash regex schedule: *"([^"]+)". An unquoted value doesn't match, $SCHED is empty, and the match loop hits [ -z "$SCHED" ] && continue — skipped silently, every tick, forever.

   How it gets that way: the CLI edits aeon.yml through a YAML document model that preserves an existing quoted node but writes a newly added key in plain style. So ./aeon skills schedule <name> "0 12 * * *" is safe on an entry that already had a quoted schedule:, and quietly breaks one that didn't. Same for a first-time --var.

   Nothing else detects this. The file is valid YAML, validate-config.js reports CLEAN, and ./aeon skills ls --enabled lists the skill with its schedule — because they all parse YAML properly and only the scheduler uses a regex. Fix by adding the quotes by hand.

6. Did it run and fail? ./aeon runs ls then ./aeon runs logs <id>. A failed skill retries after a 30-minute cooldown.

Three more, if the above are clean:

• It ran against the wrong repo. The giveaway is a command that reported success with a run id, but ./aeon runs ls on their instance shows nothing. gh prefers upstream over origin when no default is pinned, so an unpinned checkout sends every write to aeonfun/aeon.

  bash

  gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q .nameWithOwner   # if this isn't their repo:
  gh repo set-default <owner>/<repo>
  

  Then clean up what landed upstream — re-running against the right repo does not undo it. Any key set while mispointed is now a secret on someone else's repo:

  bash

  gh secret list -R aeonfun/aeon      # timestamps matching the misfire = theirs
  

  Rotate it at the provider first, always — it sat on a repo whose collaborators can land a workflow that reads it. Then re-set it on their instance with ./aeon secrets set NAME --stdin.

  Don't blind-delete it. gh secret list shows only last-updated, so it cannot tell you whether the upstream repo already had that secret and the misfire overwrote it. Ask before removing:

  • Upstream never had it → gh secret delete <NAME> -R <upstream>.
  • Upstream had its own → deleting breaks their scheduled runs. The owner must re-set upstream's own value; the overwrite is not reversible from here.

  If the delete 403s, they never had write access — nothing was ever written, and the earlier command failed while only looking fine.

• Missing secret. Skills declare keys in requires:. Check them against ./aeon secrets ls --set. A missing optional key (KEY?) means it degrades quietly, not that it breaks.

• "No MCP tools available." On the Claude harness a single unresolved ${VAR} in .mcp.json disables every MCP server for that run, not just the broken one (::warning::.mcp.json references secret(s) not set: … Skipping MCP this run.). Grok degrades per-server instead. If an OAuth server broke a run after working, suspect a rotated refresh token that couldn't be saved — references/mcp.md.

• It ran but sent nothing. That's usually correct. Aeon's convention is silence on no signal — a clean run sends nothing rather than an empty report.

Note: GitHub only delivers ~10% of */5 cron ticks, so the scheduler catches up missed slots for up to 12 hours. A skill firing 40 minutes late is normal.

---

Mode 4 — Turn this chat into a skill

They just did something in this chat and want it to happen on a schedule.

1. Write the skill file. skills/<name>/SKILL.md — frontmatter, then the prompt. Derive it from what actually happened in the session:

   • the prompt body = what they asked for, plus the steps that worked
   • mode: = read-only unless it needs to commit or open PRs
   • requires: = any API key the work hit (KEY? if it can degrade without it)
   • category: = one of core evolution basics dev crypto productivity
   • if they liked the output, paste a trimmed sample into the body as the format spec

2. Fix the three things that break unattended runs:

   • Nobody's there. Any point where you asked them a question has to become a default or a rule.
   • Stay silent on nothing. Add an explicit "if there's nothing worth reporting, log and exit without notifying." Otherwise it gets muted in a week.
   • Don't repeat yesterday. Add "check the last 3 days of memory/logs/ and skip anything already reported."

3. Check it can actually run there. No local filesystem, no logged-in tools. If the session read their home directory or used a local MCP server, say so plainly — that part won't work unattended unless it's wired as a repo secret / .mcp.json. Wiring an MCP server for unattended use (dashboard Connect, OAuth refresh, the rotating-token PAT): references/mcp.md.

4. Add the aeon.yml entry yourself. A new skill on disk has no entry, and ./aeon skills enable|schedule will not create one — they only flip entries that already exist, and report no change — already in that state, which is false. Add it by hand, disabled, before the fallback heartbeat: line:

   yaml

     my-skill: { enabled: false, schedule: "0 12 * * *" }
   

   Include the quoted schedule: even though it's disabled — the quotes are load-bearing. Writing a bare { enabled: false } and letting ./aeon skills schedule add the key later produces an unquoted value the scheduler cannot read, and the skill never fires (Mode 3, check 5). Seeding a quoted node here means every later CLI edit preserves the quotes.

   Match the inline { … } form the other 61 entries use, on one line. aeon.yml:367 reads per-skill model:/harness: overrides with a single-line grep, so an entry split across lines takes the global default instead.

   This is the one sanctioned exception to "never hand-edit the YAML". Validate after: node scripts/validate-config.js — but note it only checks structure, and will not catch an unquoted value.

5. Regenerate BOTH catalogs, then ship it as a PR. A new skill trips three CI gates. Run them locally — nothing blocks a merge on red, main is unprotected and has no rulesets, so an unrun gate just fails after the fact:

   bash

   bash scripts/check-skill-categories.sh   # category is one of the six
   bin/generate-skills-json                 # catalog/skills.json
   bin/generate-packs-json                  # catalog/packs.json — NOT optional
   

   generate-packs-json is the one everyone forgets: catalog/skills.json is itself a trigger path for ci-packs-json, so committing the skills catalog without the pack catalog goes red on a workflow you never touched. Commit both files.

   Full gate list, triggers, and the ci-tests / ci-apps commands: references/ci.md.

6. Run it once (./aeon skills run <name>), show them the output, then schedule it via Mode 2.

Skill file shape

yaml

---
name: my-skill
description: One line — what it does and what it sends.
metadata:
  title: My Skill
  mode: read-only
  category: basics
  var: ""
  tags:
    - content
  requires:
    - SOME_API_KEY?
---

Today is ${today}. <the prompt — plain instructions, including judgment calls>

## Steps
1. <the procedure — 43 of 76 skills lead with this>

## Network note
<curl / WebFetch / `./secretcurl` / `gh api` — how this skill fetches>

## Log
Report via `./notify` (use `./notify -f file.md` for anything multi-line).
Send nothing if there's nothing worth reporting.
Append what you did to `memory/logs/${today}.md` under a `### <skill-name>` heading.

Bodies run 133–757 lines (~306 median) — a skill is a prompt in prose, not a config file. ## Steps / ## Network note / ## Constraints / ## Log is the house shape.

Four things that bite when authoring — full detail in references/skill-anatomy.md:

• requires: is a least-privilege allowlist — the run exports only the keys named here. Inline (requires: [KEY?]) and block (- KEY lines) both parse, top-level or nested under metadata:. The catch is the value: only names matching ^[A-Z][A-Z0-9_]{2,}$ (trailing ? = optional) are injected; a lowercase or malformed entry is silently dropped.
• A typo'd mode: grants write. Unknown values fall back to write, never to the safer tier. The exact string is read-only.
• ${today} / ${var} are not templated. Nothing rewrites SKILL.md; the workflow puts the date and var in the surrounding prompt and the model resolves them in context. Inventing ${my_thing} yields a literal ${my_thing}.
• Never put a secret on a command line. Use ./secretcurl with a {ENV_NAME} placeholder in braces — Claude Code's permission analyzer blocks $SECRET expansions at run time.

Schedules do not go in SKILL.md — they live in aeon.yml. 10 upstream skills carry a schedule: or cron: frontmatter line anyway; nothing reads it (scheduler.yml parses aeon.yml only). Don't copy that pattern, and don't trust one you find — check aeon.yml.

---

Mode 5 — Change what an existing skill does

"Make the digest shorter", "stop covering X", "add a source". More common than authoring a new skill.

First, check whether it's a config change, not a file edit. Most skills take a topic, filter, or mode through var — read the skill's var: line and the comment on its aeon.yml entry before touching the body. If var covers it, you're done:

bash

./aeon skills set digest --var "rust"          # no file edit at all

Otherwise edit skills/<name>/SKILL.md:

1. Read the whole body first. These files run long (200–750 lines) and carry judgment rules, exit taxonomies, and scoring rubrics that a targeted edit can silently contradict.
2. Don't strip the survival machinery. Whatever else changes, the skill must keep: the ./notify path, the silent-on-no-signal exit, the memory/logs/${today}.md append under ### <skill-name>, and any already-reported dedup. Edits that "tighten" a skill often delete these. The ### <skill-name> heading is parsed by the health loop and the dedup rule reads the last 3 days of logs — breaking either makes the skill re-report until it gets muted. Conventions in references/skill-anatomy.md.
3. Update frontmatter if the behaviour moved. A new data source that needs a key → add it to requires:. Now writes files or opens PRs → mode: write. Changed description:, name:, category: or requires: → regenerate both catalogs (bin/generate-skills-json && bin/generate-packs-json) and commit both; skills.json carries those fields and feeds packs.json. See references/ci.md.
4. Warn if it's an upstream skill. Anything shipped in aeonfun/aeon will conflict on the next git merge upstream/main. Fine, but say so — the two-repo convention is to keep local edits deliberate and few.
5. Run it once (./aeon skills run <name>) and read the output before leaving.

Automated alternative: the in-repo autoresearch skill evolves a target skill by generating four scored variations and shipping the winner as a PR. Reach for it when the ask is "make this better" rather than a specific change.

---

Mode 6 — "What should I turn on?"

The real first question during onboarding. Don't dump the catalog. Ask two or three questions about what they actually want handled while they're away, then propose three skills with a one-line reason each.

Three at a time, not twelve. Every enabled skill is a recurring notification, and the fastest way to kill an instance is to make it noisy on day one. heartbeat is already on and stays silent unless something needs attention.

bash

./aeon skills ls                 # all skills — SKILL / ON / SCHEDULE / PACK / DESC
./aeon skills ls --enabled       # only what actually runs
./aeon skills ls --pack crypto   # one pack
./aeon skills <name>             # one skill's detail
./aeon packs ls                  # the six first-party packs

ls footers with 76 skills · 1 enabled — read it to them before proposing anything. First run installs the CLI runtime (tsx + yaml, ~12MB); the npm noise is one-time and expected. Grep-only equivalents: references/layout.md.

Packs are a visibility filter, not a runtime switch — revealing one runs nothing. Core (12), Evolution (9) and Basics (18) show by default; Dev (11), Crypto (15) and Productivity (11) are on demand.

Reasonable starting sets:

They care about	Propose
Their repos	github-monitor, pr-review, changelog
A topic / research	digest, article, mention-radar
Markets	token-movers, defi-overview, monitor-polymarket
Shipping / traction	heartbeat, shiplog, bd-radar

Installing more

bash

bin/install-skill-pack --list             # browse the community registry
bin/install-skill-pack <owner>/<repo>     # install a curated pack
bin/add-skill <owner>/<repo> --list       # any repo containing SKILL.md files

Everything lands disabled, security-scanned, with provenance in skills.lock.

Read a community SKILL.md before enabling it. Installing a pack means running a stranger's prompt with your secrets injected. The scanner is regex — it can't catch prompt injection. Check that requires: matches the stated job, that capabilities: is honest, and that nothing instructs the agent to send data somewhere unrelated.

Confirm explicitly before enabling anything with real-world blast radius: distribute-tokens (sends USDC), schedule-ads (spends money), send-email and vuln-scanner (contact real people), deploy-prototype and feature (push to other people's repos).

---

Mode 7 — Strategy and voice

Two files that ride in the context of every run. Neither is required, both are cheap, and they move output quality more than any per-skill tuning.

STRATEGY.md — the north star

Imported into CLAUDE.md, so it's in every skill's context: goal, priorities, audience, hard constraints. When a choice isn't otherwise determined, this breaks the tie. Keep it tight (it costs tokens on every single run) and specific (a vague strategy can't break a tie).

bash

./aeon strategy show
./aeon strategy set --file STRATEGY.md
./aeon strategy build "<one-line goal>"    # dispatches the strategy-builder skill

build reads the brief plus the repo README and memory/MEMORY.md, then commits a draft. It runs as an Action, so pull once it finishes. No API key needed.

soul/ — how it sounds

By default Aeon has no personality. soul/SOUL.md (identity, worldview, opinions) and soul/STYLE.md (voice, vocabulary, anti-patterns) are read on every run, so notifications and content sound like the operator. soul/examples/ holds 10–20 calibration samples.

bash

./aeon soul show
./aeon soul build --handle <x-handle> --name "<Full Name>" --links <url,url>

XAI_API_KEY gives the richest read of a real X timeline; without it, soul-builder falls back to web search. There's also a gallery of complete example souls at github.com/aeonfun/soul.md to start from.

The quality bar: specific enough to be wrong. "I think most AI safety discourse is galaxy-brained cope" is useful. "I have nuanced views on AI safety" is not. Push for the first kind — a soul that can't offend anyone won't sound like anyone.

---

Mode 8 — Mine history for skills to automate

"What am I doing by hand over and over that Aeon could just do?" Mode 4 turns this chat into a skill; Mode 8 mines past chats to find which chat is worth turning into one. It reads the operator's local coding-agent transcripts (~/.claude/projects or ~/.codex/sessions), so it only works on their own machine — never inside an Aeon run.

1. Scan. Run the miner from the instance repo root:

   bash

   node "${PLUGIN_ROOT:-$CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/aeon/scripts/mine-history.mjs" --days 45 --top 15
   

   It parses every top-level session in the window (skips subagent sidechains), normalises shell commands to binary subcommand, groups session titles, and prints a digest ranked by distinct sessions × distinct days — recurrence and cadence, not raw volume. Flags: --days N (window, default 120), --project SUBSTR (only sessions whose cwd matches — scope to one repo/topic), --top N, --min-sessions N, --json. It has no dependencies and reverts to a clean error if there's no history. Deeper reading of the tables and the candidate rubric: references/history-mining.md.

2. Read it as a human would. The digest is raw signal, not a verdict — the judgment is yours:

   • Recurring command workflows — a binary subcommand across many sessions and many days is a habit. Universal plumbing (git status, gh auth, bare node/python3) is already filtered out, but gh pr/gh api/npm run are substrate too — high everywhere, weak as a skill idea. Look for the distinctive recurring call: a named script, a specific CLI (x-cli, langfuse, raindrop), a tight gh api pattern.
   • Recurring task themes — grouped session titles are the strongest signal. A title you've hit across many days at a rough cadence ("check X", "review Y", "digest Z") is almost always the real automation candidate.
   • Tooling / projects — which MCP servers and repos the work lives in; tells you what a skill would need wired and where to scope --project.

3. Filter to genuine candidates. A row is worth proposing only if it's all of:

   • Recurring — spans several sessions across several days, not one busy afternoon.
   • Fetch/compute/report-shaped — pulls or checks something and reports. Interactive, decision-heavy, or one-off migration work does not automate.
   • Unattended-safe — no dependence on local files, logged-in desktop apps, or a human answering mid-task (Mode 4 step 2/3 covers hardening).
   • Not already a skill. Dedup against the instance: ./aeon skills ls. Much recurring gh pr work is already pr-review/pr-check; a research cadence is already digest/mention-radar. If an existing skill covers it, the move is Mode 2 (reschedule) or Mode 5 (edit its var), not a new skill.

4. Propose three, with evidence. Don't dump the digest. Name three candidates, each with its recurrence count as proof ("you did X across N sessions over D days"), a one-line skill sketch (what it fetches, what it sends), a suggested mode: (read-only if it only fetches and reports) and a suggested schedule: inferred from the observed cadence (seen ~daily → daily; ~weekly → weekly). Ask which to build.

5. Hand off to Mode 4 to author the chosen one — the same skill-file shape, unattended-hardening, quoted-schedule: entry, and dual-catalog CI. Mode 8 finds the work; Mode 4 ships it.

Privacy: the transcripts are read locally and only the aggregate digest is surfaced. Don't paste raw prompt bodies or anything sensitive from a session into a channel or a committed file; the counts and titles are enough to decide.

---

Providers and harnesses

Two independent axes. Don't confuse them: the gateway decides which model answers; the harness decides which CLI runs the skill.

Gateway — what powers Claude Code

Set a secret and it's live. aeon.yml ships gateway: { provider: auto }, which resolves at run time from whichever keys exist, in this priority order:

text

claude → anthropic → openrouter → bankr → usepod → venice → surplus → grok

direct is not a hop in that chain — it's the placeholder when none of the eight secrets is set. It requires nothing and configures nothing, so the run proceeds on whatever ANTHROPIC_* env happens to exist and otherwise fails at the first model call. "Resolved to direct" in a log means no key was found, not that a fallback worked.

Provider	Secret	Notes
Claude subscription	CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN	One-click OAuth, included in Pro/Max
Anthropic API	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Pay-as-you-go
OpenRouter	OPENROUTER_API_KEY	sk-or-… · Anthropic-native passthrough, lowest-risk
Bankr	BANKR_LLM_KEY	bk_… · discounted Opus
UsePod	USEPOD_TOKEN	No prefix — pass --provider usepod. Token sits in the base URL, keep it secret
Venice	VENICE_API_KEY	No prefix — pass --provider venice. Privacy-first, bridged via a sidecar
Surplus	SURPLUS_API_KEY	inf_… · settles USDC on Base — fund the wallet + approve() once first
Grok (xAI)	XAI_API_KEY	xai-… · passthrough to api.x.ai

It runs as a cascade, not a single choice: the highest-priority key goes first, and on any failure (no credits, rate limit, outage, dud response) the run falls over to the next provider whose key is set. It only errors if every one fails. The log prints Routing attempt via '<provider>' per hop.

• Reorder: repo variable GATEWAY_ORDER (space-separated names).
• Pin one (disables failover): ./aeon config set gateway <name>.
• Any Anthropic-compatible endpoint: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY plus the repo variable ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL — e.g. https://api.deepseek.com/anthropic.

Harness — which CLI runs the skill

claude (default) or grok. The Grok harness runs the grok CLI instead of Claude Code and bypasses the gateway entirely — it has its own auth.

• Set it: ./aeon config set harness grok globally, or harness: "grok" on a single skill's aeon.yml entry — quoted, on the entry's one inline line. Per-skill model: and harness: are read by a single-line grep that requires double quotes (aeon.yml:367, :380), so an unquoted or line-split override is silently ignored and the skill keeps running the global default — no error, and the log's model= line looks normal. After setting either by CLI, re-read the entry and add the quotes if they're missing.
• Auth: XAI_API_KEY, or an X account (SuperGrok / X Premium+) via the dashboard's Connect X account, which stores GROK_CREDENTIALS. There is no CLI flag for the X OAuth flow — send them to ./aeon (the dashboard) for that one.
• Models: grok-4.5 (default, reasoning) or grok-composer-2.5-fast (cheap).
• No free tier.

Tell them up front:

• Grok runs report 0 tokens — its JSON carries no token counts, so cost tracking reads blank. Not a bug.
• The X OAuth session expires. If unattended runs start failing on auth, reconnect.
• mode: read-only still applies (maps to --sandbox read-only), and MCP works.

Per-skill grok knobs, in SKILL.md frontmatter (ignored on the Claude harness): max_turns (default 60), best_of_n, verify, and effort (low|medium|high|xhigh|max — reasoning models only; grok-composer-2.5-fast rejects it).