[en] Real time evolution of classical gauge fields is relevant for a number of applications in particle physics and cosmology, ranging from the early Universe to dynamics of quark–gluon plasma. We present an explicit non-compact lattice formulation of the interaction between a shift-symmetric field and some $U(1)$ gauge sector, $a(x)F_{\mu \nu }{\tilde{F}}^{\mu \nu }$, reproducing the continuum limit to order $\mathcal{O}(d{x}_{\mu }^2)$ and obeying the following properties: (i) the system is gauge invariant and (ii) shift symmetry is exact on the lattice. For this end we construct a definition of the topological number density $\mathcal{K}=F_{\mu \nu }{\tilde{F}}^{\mu \nu }$ that admits a lattice total derivative representation $\mathcal{K}={\mathrm{\Delta }}_{\mu }^{+}{K}^{\mu }$, reproducing to order $\mathcal{O}(d{x}_{\mu }^2)$ the continuum expression $\mathcal{K}={\partial }_{\mu }{K}^{\mu }\propto \overrightarrow{E}\cdot \overrightarrow{B}$. If we consider a homogeneous field $a(x)=a(t)$, the system can be mapped into an Abelian gauge theory with Hamiltonian containing a Chern–Simons term for the gauge fields. This allow us to study in an accompanying paper the real time dynamics of fermion number non-conservation (or chirality breaking) in Abelian gauge theories at finite temperature. When $a(x)=a(\overrightarrow{x},t)$ is inhomogeneous, the set of lattice equations of motion do not admit however a simple explicit local solution (while preserving an $\mathcal{O}(d{x}_{\mu }^2)$ accuracy). We discuss an iterative scheme allowing to overcome this difficulty.