BigRAE

Self-service agentic cyber-range platform for authorized purple, red and blue team exercises, with isolated guest workloads and operator-selected telemetry. Canonical repository: Brad-Edwards/bigrae.

Start with the current-state architecture handbook for system context, deployment components, authority, lifecycle, data ownership, package boundaries and supported extensions. Documentation is authored under docs/ and published through the single MkDocs site (ADR-038).

The repository was renamed on 2026-10-25. Old repository URLs redirect to BigRAE. The documentation site moved to /bigrae/ on that date; update bookmarks that use /shifter/, because GitHub Pages does not redirect the old site path.

Get started

• GCP installation and first exercise: configuration, bootstrap, health checks and the shipped synthetic smoke pack.
• Full installation setup: prerequisites, cloud identity, Terraform inputs, DNS, operator bootstrap and deployment flow.
• Deployment secrets and variables: the authoritative checklist of references and environment-specific configuration.
• Scenario contracts: CyberScript and ACES history, the current RAES hard cut and rollback constraints.

CyberScript is retired. Current scenario authoring uses the pinned RAES and RAES environment-pack releases. Install dependencies from each maintained package's manifest; do not install a local CyberScript package.

Develop

Use Python 3.12+, uv, the frontend's declared Node version and npm, and pre-commit. From the repository root:

uv sync --project shifter/shifter_platform
uv sync --project shifter/installation
npm ci --prefix shifter/shifter_platform/frontend
pre-commit install

Use local development setup and contribution guidance for the development workflow. Production control planes use the shared Helm chart on GKE or EKS. Runtime, cloud and image prerequisites depend on the selected installation bundle.

Test and document

Run tests for the packages you change, for example:

make test-platform
make test-provisioner
make policy
uv run --with-requirements docs/requirements.txt mkdocs build --strict

The command matrix lists every lane and its CI job. See also ADR enforcement. CI owns the full quality matrix; local hooks also enforce architecture and secret hygiene. Architecture-boundary changes include handbook review.

Support and security

BigRAE is maintained on a community, best-effort basis without a response SLA. Use SUPPORT.md for assistance and support limits and SECURITY.md for private vulnerability reporting. Run exercises only in environments you are authorized to control, with human oversight.

The maintainer is Brad Edwards. The repository is MIT licensed; LICENSE retains the copyright holders' notices.

Contributing and releases

Read CONTRIBUTING.md. Feature PRs target dev and use Conventional Commit titles. Release Please owns the version and CHANGELOG.md from the history promoted to main; see the release workflow.

Citation

@software{shifter,
  author       = {Edwards, Brad},
  title        = {Shifter: Self-Service Agentic Cyber Range Platform},
  year         = {2026},
  license      = {MIT},
  url          = {https://github.com/Brad-Edwards/bigrae}
}

Include the exact release or commit you used in your publication.