Portable Agent Layer (PAL)

A cross-platform, cross-agent layer for portable AI workflows, memory, and accumulated knowledge.

PAL lets you carry your agent context across Windows, macOS, and Linux, and work across different agent runtimes and interfaces such as Claude Code, opencode, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Codex. Its core idea is simple: your knowledge and workflows should belong to you, not to a single machine, tool, or vendor.

Inspired in part by Daniel Miessler's work on Personal AI Infrastructure. PAL is an independent open-source implementation focused on portability across platforms and agents. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Daniel Miessler.

Why PAL?

Most AI setups are fragmented.

Your prompts live in one place, your context in another, your notes somewhere else, and your workflows are often tied to a specific operating system or a specific agent tool.

PAL is designed to fix that.

With PAL, you can:

• keep your AI workflow portable
• move accumulated knowledge between machines
• work across multiple agent environments
• avoid lock-in to a single platform or interface
• build a durable personal layer that outlives any one tool

Install

Prerequisites

Bun is required. PAL is built on Bun and will not work with Node.js or other runtimes. Install it with curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash.

• Bun >= 1.4.0
• At least one of: Claude Code, opencode, Cursor, GitHub Copilot CLI, or Codex

Package mode (recommended)

bun add -g portable-agent-layer
pal cli init

Repo mode (for development / contributors)

git clone https://github.com/kovrichard/portable-agent-layer.git
cd portable-agent-layer
bun install
bun run install:all

In repo mode, add an alias to your shell profile:

alias pal="bun run ~/path/to/portable-agent-layer/src/cli/index.ts"

Quick start

pal cli init          # scaffold home, install hooks for all targets
pal                   # start the first installed agent in the terminal
pal cli status        # check your setup

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | pal | Start the first installed agent, in order: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor CLI, Copilot CLI, opencode. Claude sessions print a summary on exit | | pal cli init | Scaffold PAL home directory and install hooks | | pal cli install | Register hooks/skills for targets | | pal cli uninstall | Remove hooks/skills for targets | | pal cli update | Update PAL (git pull or npm update) and reinstall hooks. Install asks once whether to do this daily on its own, applied when a session closes so opening PAL is never slowed; the switch lives in the control room under Settings → Updates. On a repo install a daily run waits while the clone has uncommitted changes | | pal cli export | Export user state (telos, memory) to a zip | | pal cli import | Import user state from a zip | | pal cli status | Show current PAL configuration | | pal cli doctor | Check prerequisites and system health | | pal cli migrate | Run pending data migrations (non-destructive) | | pal cli analyze [--actionable] | Learning analysis: rating trends, failure patterns, graduation candidates | | pal cli usage | Summarize token usage and estimated cost | | pal cli actor [label <name>] | Show or rename the actor — who caused a record. Travels with an export, so a shared memory can tell two people apart | | pal cli machine [label <name>] | Show or rename this install — where a record was written. Never leaves the machine | | pal cli telos | Which TELOS topics are answered, in interview order, and which one comes next | | pal cli timezone [<zone>] | Show or set your timezone. IANA names only, validated before it is stored | | pal cli knowledge | Query & manage the knowledge store (search, graph, stats, hubs, find, show, add, ls, ingest) | | pal cli ledger | Query the action ledger — log, show <id>, stats, filtered by --project, --since, --actor, --machine, --runtime, --outcome, --tool, --target | | pal cli server | The morning screen: a local page to open before a terminal — three moves for today, an urgent/important grid over every project and every stated goal, where you left off, and a drawer holding the signal and the action ledger — start [--port <n>], stop, status. Loopback only, default port 7250. No model runs on page load | | pal cli skill link <name> | Link a personal ~/.pal/skills/<name>/ into every installed agent so it is discoverable | | pal cli skill doctor <name> | Evaluate a skill against the authoring best practices (folder/file-name match, name, description, body length, point-of-view, reference depth) | | pal cli subagent link <name> | Install a personal ~/.pal/agents/<name>.md (merged multi-platform definition) into every installed agent, split per platform | | pal cli subagent doctor <name> | Evaluate a subagent definition against the authoring best practices (name/file match, per-platform blocks, model/tools/permission shape, shipped-name collision) | | pal cli subagent list | List the user-authored subagents in ~/.pal/agents/ | | pal cli version | Print the installed PAL version. -v and --version do the same |

Target flags

init, install, and uninstall accept target flags:

pal cli install --claude      # Claude Code only
pal cli install --opencode    # opencode only
pal cli install --cursor      # Cursor only
pal cli install               # all available (default)

Supported agents

| Agent | Support | Skills | Hooks | AGENTS.md | Subagents | Inference routing | |-------|---------|--------|-------|-----------|-----------|-------------------| | Claude Code | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | claude --print | | opencode | Full | Yes | Yes (plugin) | Yes | Yes | opencode run | | Cursor | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes (injected via hook) | Yes | cursor-agent | | GitHub Copilot | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes (via ~/.copilot/instructions/*.instructions.md) | Yes | copilot | | Codex | Full | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | codex exec |

PAL's background inference (session naming, summaries, failure capture, etc.) runs through whichever subscription CLI is active — no API key required by default.

Environment variables

API keys (all optional)

PAL routes inference through the host agent's subscription CLI by default. API keys are only needed as fallbacks when no CLI binary is available, or for skills that call non-Anthropic providers.

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | PAL_ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | Fallback for hook inference when no native CLI is available. Uses Haiku. | | PAL_OPENAI_API_KEY | Fallback for hook inference when Codex is active without the codex binary, or when no Anthropic key is set. | | PAL_GEMINI_API_KEY | For YouTube video analysis and web search skill | | PAL_XAI_API_KEY | For Grok real-time research skill (X/web search) | | PAL_PERPLEXITY_API_KEY | For Perplexity deep research skill |

Path overrides

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | PAL_HOME | Override user state directory (default: ~/.pal or repo root) | | PAL_PKG | Override package root | | PAL_CLAUDE_DIR | Override Claude config dir (default: ~/.claude) | | PAL_OPENCODE_DIR | Override opencode config dir (default: ~/.config/opencode) | | PAL_CURSOR_DIR | Override Cursor config dir (default: ~/.cursor) | | PAL_COPILOT_DIR | Override Copilot config dir (default: ~/.copilot) | | PAL_CODEX_DIR | Override Codex config dir (default: ~/.codex) | | PAL_AGENTS_DIR | Override agents dir (default: ~/.agents) |

Debug / test

Enable verbose hook logging with:

pal cli debug on    # enable  → logs to memory/state/debug.log
pal cli debug off   # disable
pal cli debug       # show current status and log path

| Variable | Description | |----------|-------------| | PAL_INFERENCE_DISABLED | Set to 1 to disable all inference (used by the test suite to prevent real CLI spawns) | | PAL_NOTIFICATIONS_DISABLED | Set to 1 to suppress desktop notifications (used by the test suite) |

Skills

PAL ships with built-in skills that extend your agent's capabilities:

| Skill | Description | |-------|-------------| | analyze-pdf | Download and analyze PDF files | | analyze-youtube | Analyze YouTube videos using Gemini | | consulting-report | Generate consulting-style reports as PDFs | | council | Multi-perspective parallel debate on decisions | | create-pdf | Render structured content into a PDF | | create-skill | Scaffold a new skill from a description | | create-subagent | Scaffold a subagent and install it into every agent | | deep-research | Multi-agent parallel research in quick, standard, or extensive mode | | entities | Detect, save, and query people & companies in the personal knowledge graph | | extract-wisdom | Extract structured insights from content | | first-principles | Break down problems to fundamentals | | frontend-design | Build production-grade frontend interfaces | | fyzz-chat-api | Query Fyzz Chat conversations via API | | humanize | Rewrite text to strip AI tells and read as human | | onboarding | Interview the user to fill empty TELOS topics and the timezone, one topic at a time | | opinion | Confirm or contradict tracked opinions (confidence-weighted) | | pal-analyze | Surface rating trends, failure patterns, and graduation candidates | | pal-reflect | Promote recurring observations into tracked opinions | | playwright | Screenshot a page for a visual check | | presentation | Build branded slide decks from outlines | | projects | Look up, resume, register, or manage tracked projects | | reflect | Diagnose why a PAL behavior didn't trigger | | telos | Inspect or update goals, beliefs, strategies, narratives | | think | Structured first-pass reasoning on a problem |

Core idea

PAL stands for Portable Agent Layer.

It is a layer that sits between you and the tools you use, helping preserve and transfer:

• context
• memory
• notes
• workflows
• reusable prompts
• agent-specific configurations
• accumulated knowledge

The emphasis is on portability.

Your setup should be able to travel with you.

Features

• Cross-platform: works on Windows, macOS, and Linux
• Cross-agent: full support for Claude Code, opencode, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Codex (Codex still lacks subagents)
• Subscription-first inference: background inference routes through whichever subscription CLI is active — no API key needed by default
• Portable knowledge: export and import accumulated knowledge
• A morning screen, not a dashboard: pal cli server ranks your projects and your written goals in one urgent/important grid. Urgency is read off the files — blockers, an unfinished handoff, a date in a next step, an important thing gone quiet. Importance comes from one fact per project: whether it serves a goal you wrote down, is a way the work could pay, or is kept for its own sake. PAL guesses that once at session stop; you correct it on the page or with project.ts serves <name> goal|revenue|fun, and the correction survives every later guess
• TypeScript-first: built in TypeScript from day one
• Open source: hackable, inspectable, extensible
• Composable: intended to fit into real developer workflows

Philosophy

PAL is built around a few simple beliefs:

• your AI context should be portable
• your workflows should be tool-agnostic
• your knowledge should be exportable
• your personal system should be owned by you
• agent tooling will change, but your layer should remain useful

Who this is for

PAL is for people who want:

• a personal AI layer they control
• to switch between agents without losing continuity
• to move between machines without rebuilding everything
• a durable way to store and reuse context
• an open foundation for portable agent workflows

License

MIT