Wrappers

Stability: Unstable. Verified against commit 7cb6906. The supported-shell list, flags, and default shim directory may change before 1.0.

Arbitraitor installs shell shims that intercept curl and wget, routing every invocation through the inspection pipeline before bytes reach the downstream consumer:

# 1. Install curl/wget shims
arbitraitor wrappers install

# 2. Wire the shim directory onto PATH (one-time)
arbitraitor wrappers init --install

# 3. (Optional) Verify the setup
arbitraitor wrappers status

After that, curl https://example.com/file | sh is transparently intercepted and inspected before the bytes reach the shell. A Block verdict emits nothing to stdout and exits non-zero — bash receives input only when the artifact passed all configured checks.

Shell integration

wrappers init is the primary command for wiring the shim directory onto PATH. Two modes:

# Print mode — emit snippet to stdout, eval inline or hand-paste
eval "$(arbitraitor wrappers init)"

# Auto-install mode — write a marked, idempotent block to your rcfile
# (creates ~/.bashrc.arbitraitor.bak before editing)
arbitraitor wrappers init --install

# Detect which shell you're running and which rcfile is targeted
arbitraitor wrappers init --detect-shell

# Specify a shell explicitly (default: auto-detected from $SHELL)
arbitraitor wrappers init zsh
arbitraitor wrappers init fish --install

Supported shells: bash, zsh, sh, fish, nu (Nushell), xonsh, powershell, elvish, posix, tcsh, oil (also osh / ysh).

To remove the PATH block from your rcfile:

arbitraitor wrappers init --uninstall

The block is wrapped in marker lines (# >>> arbitraitor wrappers >>> / # <<< arbitraitor wrappers <<<) so re-running --install replaces in place rather than appending. Exception: fish, nu, and powershell use a dedicated file (conf.d/arbitraitor.fish, etc.) rather than a marked block in an existing rcfile. The in-shell snippet is also idempotent: re-evaling it does not duplicate PATH entries.

See the wrappers CLI reference for the full flag surface, the default shim directory rationale, and the deprecated hook init migration path.

Default shim directory

Default: ~/.arbitraitor/shims

This directory is intentionally not on any operating system’s default PATH. A namespaced directory avoids silent replacement of system binaries (spec §28.7 invariant) and avoids collisions with user-owned scripts of the same name in ~/.local/bin.

Override with --shim-dir:

arbitraitor wrappers install --shim-dir ~/.local/bin
arbitraitor wrappers init --install --shim-dir ~/.local/bin

~/.local/bin is on default PATH on Debian (bash ≥ 4.3-15, 2016), Ubuntu (≥ 16.04), and Fedora (bash ≥ 4.2.10-3, 2012). It is not on default PATH on Arch, RHEL, NixOS, Alpine, or inside minimal containers. The rcfile snippet written by wrappers init --install puts any chosen shim directory on PATH regardless of distro defaults.

Health checks

Check the status of Arbitraitor’s subsystems:

# Human-readable status
arbitraitor status

# JSON output for monitoring
arbitraitor status --json

This reports CAS store health, detector availability, and version information.

Configuration

Arbitraitor reads configuration from ~/.arbitraitor/config.toml:

[fetch]
timeout = 30
max_redirects = 10

[policy]
default_action = "prompt"
non_interactive_prompt_action = "block"

[detectors]
shell_analysis = true
powershell_analysis = true
max_archive_depth = 10

Secrets can be referenced from environment variables or files without hardcoding:

[intel]
urlhaus_key = "secret://env/URLHAUS_API_KEY"

See the Configuration reference for all options.

Next steps

• CLI Reference — all commands and flags
• Architecture — what happens under the hood
• Security Model — invariants, threat model, sandbox
• Plugins — extend Arbitraitor with custom detectors