Although considered to be fixed sequence of computational procedures, the actual nature of algorithms emerges only in practice through its performative agency enacted within a network of human and non-human actors. In this article, I trace this agency in the everyday practices of the algorithmic system of welfare distribution, namely, the Aadhaar-enabled Public Distribution System (AePDS), through ethnographic fieldwork across three states in India. Conceptualising the AePDS as a programmed welfare system, I unpack its underlying assemblages to show that far from being objective technologies of governance, algorithmic sorting for targeted welfare is enacted in relation to a multitude of human actors, databases, machines, documents and shifting institutional contexts, in ways that are markedly different from its fixed computation properties. This mode of enquiry, I argue, makes the process of algorithmic enactment more transparent and comprehensible, which in turn will aid in better design and governance of such systems.