aged is a daemon that stores a user's date of birth and exposes a D-Bus
API for applications to query which age bracket the user falls into under
a given jurisdiction.
California and Colorado have begun requiring OS vendors to collect date of
birth during device setup and expose a bracketed age API to applications.
aged fulfills this role on Linux: it stores the birthdate securely, ships
jurisdiction-specific bracket definitions, and lets any application on the
session bus ask "is this user a child, a minor, or an adult?" without ever
revealing the actual date of birth.
Because a lot of the specifics of how this will be implemented are still up in the air, bills have yet to pass, etc., many things in this repository are subject to change; this includes the D-Bus name and interface, the specifics of what and how we return to clients, and so on.
None of the design is set in stone; please feel free to provide feedback on issues like user privacy, security, unintentional data disclosure, and so on.
This entire project — code, packaging, documentation — was written by Claude (Anthropic) as an experiment in AI-assisted software development using Claude Code.
Lastly: please do not provide feedback on your opinion of these laws. Whether we approve of them or not, they exist and, for the time being, at least some users and vendors will be subject to them. The creation of this project is not an endorsement of these laws or their purposes (stated or alleged).
The daemon runs as a systemd user service. If installed from a package or
via make install, D-Bus activation will start it automatically on first
use. To run it manually:
aged daemon
aged set-birthdate 1990-05-15
The date is stored in the user's keychain via the
Secret Service
D-Bus API (e.g. GNOME Keyring or KWallet). If no Secret Service provider is
available, aged falls back to a plain file at
~/.config/aged/data.toml.
aged get-age-bracket --jurisdiction US/California
This prints a single label such as child, minor, or adult.
If you set a default jurisdiction, the --jurisdiction flag can be omitted:
aged set-default-jurisdiction US/California
aged get-age-bracket
aged list-jurisdictions
With the geoclue feature enabled, aged can use
GeoClue2 to
detect the user's jurisdiction automatically:
aged detect-jurisdiction
Applications can query the daemon directly over the session bus without going through the CLI.
- Bus name:
org.aged.Daemon - Object path:
/org/aged/Daemon - Interface:
org.aged.Daemon
| Method | Signature | Description |
|---|---|---|
SetBirthdate |
(s) → () |
Store birthdate (YYYY-MM-DD) |
GetAgeBracket |
(s) → s |
Get bracket for a jurisdiction (empty string = default) |
ListJurisdictions |
() → as |
List configured jurisdiction names |
GetDefaultJurisdiction |
() → s |
Get stored default jurisdiction |
SetDefaultJurisdiction |
(s) → () |
Set default jurisdiction |
DetectJurisdiction |
() → s |
Detect jurisdiction from location |
Example with busctl:
busctl --user call org.aged.Daemon /org/aged/Daemon org.aged.Daemon GetAgeBracket s "US/California"
~/.config/aged/config.toml:
[storage]
backend = "secret-service" # or "file"
[jurisdictions]
extra_paths = []Built-in jurisdictions are compiled into the binary. To add or override
jurisdictions, create ~/.config/aged/jurisdictions.toml:
[[jurisdiction]]
name = "US/California"
region = "US-CA"
brackets = [
{ max_age = 13, label = "child" },
{ max_age = 18, label = "minor" },
{ label = "adult" },
]Each bracket has an optional max_age (exclusive upper bound). Brackets
are evaluated in order; the first whose max_age exceeds the user's age
wins. The last bracket must omit max_age as the catch-all.
| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
systemd |
Yes | systemd readiness notification via sd_notify |
geoclue |
No | GeoClue2 location-based jurisdiction detection |
Build with optional features:
cargo build --release --features geoclue
Build without systemd support:
cargo build --release --no-default-features
make
sudo make install
This installs to /usr/local by default. To change the prefix:
make PREFIX=/usr
sudo make install PREFIX=/usr
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc
rpmbuild -ba dist/aged.spec
Copy dist/PKGBUILD into a clean build directory with the source tarball,
then:
makepkg
All install targets respect DESTDIR for staged installs:
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/aged-pkg PREFIX=/usr
cargo test
MIT — see LICENSE.
Contributions are welcome. Please note the following:
AI-written code: Contributions written or partly written by AI are welcome but must be disclosed. Please note in your pull request which portions were AI-generated or AI-assisted. Low-effort drive-by PRs may be closed without comment.
Description rewriting: You are welcome to use AI tools to help rephrase or clarify your PR descriptions or issue reports if you find that helpful, but doing so is not required or expected.
