# AIM --- Ansible Inventory Manager

AIM is an operator-focused Python application for managing Ansible
customer inventories, access configuration, Vaults and curated playbook
execution.

## Source layout

``` text
/etc/ansible/scripts/
├── README.md
├── install.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── docs/
├── pyproject.toml
└── src/
    └── aim/
```

AIM uses `/etc/ansible/inventories/<customer>/hosts.yml` as the
inventory source of truth.

## Supported platform groups

-   `linux`
-   `windows`
-   `sophosxgs`
-   `pfsense`

A host can belong to multiple groups/subgroups. Platform groups remain
the top-level groups because they define Ansible connection semantics.

## Quick start

See [install.md](install.md) for installation, virtual-environment
setup, authorization-group configuration and recovery of Git-ignored
runtime data.

Start AIM with:

``` bash
aim
```

Useful UI troubleshooting modes:

``` bash
aim --no-clear
aim --plain
aim --live-output
```

## Documentation

-   [Installation](install.md)
-   [Operations](docs/OPERATIONS.md)
-   [Inventory](docs/INVENTORY.md)
-   [Windows / WinRM / AD](docs/WINDOWS.md)
-   [Recovery](docs/RECOVERY.md)
-   [Security and sensitive data](docs/SECURITY.md)
-   [Development](docs/DEVELOPMENT.md)
-   [Changelog](CHANGELOG.md)

## Important operational rules

AIM does not use `.hosts.tsv` as inventory state. `hosts.yml` is
authoritative.

Routine host changes use local YAML validation and do not unnecessarily
prompt for the Vault password. Explicit inventory validation may invoke
`ansible-inventory` and request the customer Vault password when a Vault
exists.

Existing customer-specific values and arbitrary valid YAML structures
should be preserved unless an operator explicitly requests an operation
that changes them.