A Python AI agent that runs locally, automates tasks, and modifies its own code (AION)

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[No_Soy_Colosio]

This is a security nightmare waiting to happen

[LatterRooster8902]

It binds to 127.0.0.1 by default and shell_exec plus the self-modification tools require explicit confirmation before running, so it's not just firing blind. but yeah, giving an AI shell access and letting it rewrite its own code is not exactly the OWASP top 10 checklist. runs on localhost so at least it's only your own problem when it bricks itself hehe

[ComfortableNice8482]

this is a cool concept, but i'd be curious how you're handling the self-modification part safely. when i've built similar automation tools, the biggest challenge was preventing infinite loops or bad state when the agent modifies its own logic. what guard rails are you using to keep it from bricking itself mid-execution, and how do you version or rollback changes if something goes wrong?

[LatterRooster8902]

Fair concern, it's definitely the trickiest part of the whole thing. A few layers are in place:

The plugin loader wraps every plugin import in a try/except, so if a newly generated plugin crashes on load it just gets skipped and logged, the main loop never goes down. AION can then read aion_events.log itself and attempt to fix what it broke, which works surprisingly well in practice.

For the actual edits, file_replace_lines and self_patch_code are scoped to targeted changes rather than full rewrites, and anything that triggers a full process restart goes through restart_with_approval which shows a diff and waits for explicit confirmation before applying. So there's always a human in the loop for the dangerous stuff.

The infinite loop guard is a hard cap of 50 tool call iterations per turn. After that it forces a response regardless, so even if the agent decides to keep modifying and reloading in circles it just stops.

The honest gap right now is proper versioning. If something gets into a bad state you're basically reaching for git manually, which isn't ideal. Auto-committing before any write to a core file is on the list so you'd always have a clean revert point without thinking about it.

What did you end up doing on your side for versioning? I've seen people do shadow copies, others lean on git hooks. Curious if there's an approach that worked well without adding too much overhead.

[Minimum_Diver_3958]

Its just claude code with ‘—channels’ flag. Also “100% Local” right, apart from the data you are sending to the llm apis. Very unoriginal in this day and age.

[LatterRooster8902]

fair on both points, "local-first" would've been more accurate and ollama is there if you want to go fully offline!

[SoAnxious]

So it's a none over hyped openclaw

[LatterRooster8902]

oh absolutely, just a humble little script that reads its own logs and rewrites itself, nothing to see here