Build your own security agents

Open-source framework for security agents with live, read-only access to your infrastructure.

Quickstart · Built-in agents · Your first agent · Docs

Ask your infrastructure anything. Cynative runs frontier models across your code, cloud and runtime - reasoning through GitHub, GitLab, AWS, GCP, Azure and Kubernetes as one system - and comes back with verified answers.

cynative "what in my cloud is publicly exposed that shouldn't be?"

45 built-in agents for AWS, GCP, Azure, GitHub and Kubernetes - privilege escalation, public exposure, supply chain, detection coverage and more - or you write your own in one markdown file.

One question fans out across your whole stack: Cynative writes and runs code in an ephemeral sandbox, querying your APIs in parallel. Every finding is cross-checked and traced back to its origin.

Unlike coding agents and MCP servers, it's read-only by construction: every call is gated and authorized before a credential is attached - point it at production with confidence.

What your agents get

• Code-to-runtime: Reasons through AWS, GCP, Azure, any K8s, GitHub and GitLab
• Sandbox: Generates and runs code to research at scale, with no network or host access of its own
• Action-gate: Resolves every call to its required IAM actions and applies a read-only policy before a credential is attached
• Evidence-backed: Cross-checks to verify every finding
• Sovereign: One binary, your model, your data stays yours

Quickstart

Install and set an LLM:

brew install cynative/tap/cynative

export CYNATIVE_LLM_PROVIDER=anthropic
export CYNATIVE_LLM_MODEL=claude-opus-5
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...

It picks up the credentials already in your shell. Run a built-in agent:

cynative -p --agent aws-network-exposure

Or ask it anything:

cynative -p "which IAM roles can escalate to admin?"
cynative -p "high-risk cloud permissions, trace each to the PR where it was granted"
cynative -p "cloud credentials leaked in source code and their current blast radius"
cynative "live cloud resources absent from IaC - drift" # starts an interactive session
cat findings.json | cynative -p "triage these findings by exploitability"

Built-in agents

45 agents are embedded in the binary. Each one is a reviewed prompt for a specific question.

cynative agents list            # every agent, with its description
cynative agents show <name>     # the exact prompt that would run

The full catalog with a one-line description of each agent is in docs/agents-catalog.md.

Your first agent

cynative agents show <name> prints the exact file an agent would run. To make your own version, copy it to your agents directory under a new name and edit it:

mkdir -p ~/.cynative/agents

cynative agents show aws-public-datastores > ~/.cynative/agents/my-aws-public-datastores.md
# edit ~/.cynative/agents/my-aws-public-datastores.md, then:
cynative -p --agent my-aws-public-datastores

An agent is a markdown file: strict YAML frontmatter whose only key is description, then the prompt body. The filename is the name. A file in ~/.cynative/agents/ wins over a built-in of the same name, so give your copy a distinct name to keep both. See docs/agents.md for the format.

Running agents

cynative -p --agent aws-public-datastores "AWS account 128149835728 only"   # with a task
cynative -p --agent aws-public-datastores                    # without
cynative --agent aws-public-datastores                       # seeds an interactive session

--agent composes with -p, --auto-approve, --config and piped stdin, so the same file runs interactively while you develop it and non-interactively once it settles.

Agents are read from ~/.cynative/agents/ and from the set built into the binary; a user file wins over a built-in of the same name. cynative agents list shows every agent with its source and marks the shadowed copies, and cynative agents show <name> prints the exact file that would run.

Can't a coding agent with MCPs do this?

One binary, your model endpoint, your account. Run it on an instance in the cloud it audits, through that cloud's managed inference, and nothing leaves your environment: security on your infrastructure, from within your infrastructure.

Installation

Homebrew (macOS / Linux - recommended):

brew install cynative/tap/cynative

Install script (macOS / Linux - verifies the download's SHA-256 against the release checksums.txt, failing closed):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cynative/cynative/main/install.sh | sh

Windows (Scoop):

scoop bucket add cynative https://github.com/cynative/scoop-bucket
scoop install cynative

Update / uninstall

Windows (PowerShell script): irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cynative/cynative/main/install.ps1 | iex; uninstall with & ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cynative/cynative/main/install.ps1))) -Uninstall.

Install-script options: pin a version with CYNATIVE_VERSION=v1.0.0; change the target directory with CYNATIVE_INSTALL_DIR (default ~/.local/bin, no sudo). The script checks the GitHub release attestation when gh is installed (advisory by default); set CYNATIVE_REQUIRE_ATTESTATION=1 to make a failed check fatal. For a high-integrity install, fetch the script from an immutable tag instead of main.

macOS (manual): download cynative_Darwin_arm64.pkg (Apple Silicon) or cynative_Darwin_x86_64.pkg (Intel) from the releases page and install with sudo installer -pkg <file> -target / (or double-click). These are signed, notarized and stapled - no first-run Gatekeeper prompt. The raw cynative_Darwin_*.tar.gz archives remain for scripting/CI; a quarantined tarball binary's first GUI launch needs internet for the online notarization check (terminal/install.sh/Homebrew use is unaffected).

Linux / Windows (manual): download a prebuilt binary and checksums.txt from the releases page, verify the SHA-256, and put the binary on your PATH. Single static binary, no dependencies.

Verify a release signature (optional). New releases ship checksums.txt.sigstore.json, a Sigstore bundle signing checksums.txt with a keyless certificate bound to this repo's release workflow. Authenticate the manifest, then check your archive against it:

cosign verify-blob checksums.txt \
  --bundle checksums.txt.sigstore.json \
  --certificate-identity "https://github.com/cynative/cynative/.github/workflows/release.yaml@refs/heads/main" \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com"

grep cynative_