centium

A minimal, preview-first package manager UX for Arch Linux — with AUR support.

What it does

centium never touches packages directly. Every command shows you exactly what is about to happen, then hands off to pacman or builds from the AUR.

Install

From the AUR (recommended):

paru -S centium

From source:

git clone https://github.com/Kolgrim33/centium.git
cd centium
pip install --break-system-packages -e .

Commands

suggest

centium suggest

Scans your installed packages and surfaces complementary tools you might be missing. No other AUR helper or pacman wrapper does proactive discovery based on what you already have. because you have hyprland: hypridle idle daemon — auto-lock and screen-off hyprlock screen locker for Hyprland because you have neovim: ripgrep fast grep — used by telescope.nvim lazygit terminal git UI — integrates with neovim because you have docker: lazydocker terminal dashboard for docker dive explore docker image layers

risk

centium risk brave-bin

Scores an AUR package trustworthiness before you install it. Checks votes, popularity, maintainer status, out-of-date flag, package age, and scans the PKGBUILD for suspicious patterns. Returns a score from 0-100 with a verdict: LOW / MEDIUM / HIGH / CRITICAL RISK.

Especially relevant given the 2026 AUR compromise — know what you are installing before you run it.

aur

centium aur brave-bin

Full AUR install pipeline with recursive dependency resolution — no paru or yay required.

• Fetches package info from the AUR RPC
• Automatically detects and installs AUR dependencies before the main package
• Clones the AUR repo to ~/.cache/centium/aur/
• Scans the PKGBUILD for suspicious patterns
• Offers to show the full PKGBUILD for review
• Runs makepkg -si with your confirmation
• Detects PGP key issues and tells you exactly how to fix them

why

centium why firefox

Explains why a package is installed in plain English:

• Whether you installed it explicitly or it came in as a dependency
• When it was installed and how many days ago
• What depends on it or if it is an orphan
• Whether it is currently running
• A verdict: safe to remove or will break other packages

install

centium install firefox

Shows description, version, download size, and dependencies before confirming. Hands off to pacman.

remove

centium remove firefox

Warns which installed packages depend on the target before removing.

update

centium update

Shows exactly what would change before running pacman -Syu. After updating, reports new .pacnew files and any newly failing services.

search

centium search firefox

Clean sorted results instead of pacman wall of text. Shows repo, version, and whether already installed.

What makes centium different

Feature	centium	paru	yay
Preview before every action	yes	partial	partial
AUR dep resolution	recursive	yes	yes
Risk scoring before install	yes	no	no
Proactive package suggestions	yes	no	no
Plain English why explanation	yes	no	no
Post-update service report	yes	no	no

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• rich — installed automatically via AUR, or pip install --break-system-packages rich
• git and base-devel — for AUR installs
• pacman-contrib — optional, for safe update previews

Also check out

• hyprkit — companion CLI for Hyprland (paru -S hyprkit-git)
• pkgstory — your Arch journey told through pacman.log (paru -S pkgstory)

Roadmap

• centium orphans — find and explain unused packages
• centium health — full system health report
• Expand suggest pairing dataset with community contributions