From 7271e1bb0196348eced30f1a3fb0f7232fd17ea2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Claude Date: Fri, 22 May 2026 12:18:10 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add discussion op-ed: PAI: Back to the Future MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit A grateful but candid op-ed on PAI's future — praising Daniel Miessler's work while arguing for an unbundled, harness-agnostic model and an open development process. https://claude.ai/code/session_01RgV5uB6HtZG3aMrXL9LQAn --- .../2026-05-22-pai-back-to-the-future.md | 84 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 84 insertions(+) create mode 100644 discussions/2026-05-22-pai-back-to-the-future.md diff --git a/discussions/2026-05-22-pai-back-to-the-future.md b/discussions/2026-05-22-pai-back-to-the-future.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..15ff4c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/discussions/2026-05-22-pai-back-to-the-future.md @@ -0,0 +1,84 @@ +# PAI: Back to the Future + +I've been running Daniel Miessler's PAI v4 for a while now, and I want to start with the +part that matters most: I'm grateful. I chose PAI deliberately, and for good reasons — +Daniel's principles, his genuine engineering and security background, the respect he's +earned in the community, and the design ideas that make PAI more than a pile of prompts. +The Algorithm gives work a real shape. The Skills are thoughtful and inclusive. The whole +thing is extensible in a way that invites you to build on it. And Daniel has done all of +this without monetising it, which I don't take for granted. PAI articulated a +human-centric vision for personal AI before the current wave of agent harnesses crested, +and for a long time it felt like the "pro" option even where it lacked autonomous agency. + +So this isn't a takedown. It's a worried letter from someone who wants PAI to win. + +## Where it grinds + +My frustrations are real, though, and they've been accumulating. + +The biggest is the development model. PAI is MIT-licensed, but development is effectively +closed: the public repo is, by Daniel's own description, a *sanitized instance* of his +private infrastructure, and changes are hand-ported from the internal repo out to the +public one before each release. You can file issues, open PRs, and start discussions — but +they don't flow back through a normal public pipeline. This has been executed unevenly, +and a promised move to a more conventional open process hasn't arrived. The result is that +the community can knock on the door but can't really come in and help. + +The second is PAI's entanglement with Claude Code. This is genuinely double-edged. PAI is +excellent *because* it leans into Claude Code's services and configuration — but that +intimacy blurs the line between what's PAI and what's Claude Code, and that makes problems +hard to debug. Small example: the skill and command names aren't branded, so `/council` +or `/first-principles` sit directly in the shared namespace where I'd rather see +`/pai-thinking`. Larger example: PAI reaches deep into `settings.json`, hooks, protected +folders, voice, and the status line. Some of that may be a hard requirement — but it's +never clear which parts are essential and which are just convenient. + +The third is the lack of granular configuration. I want simple switches: voice on/off, a +simpler status line, the Algorithm on/off, even PAI itself on/off. Today those are +all-or-nothing, which pushes me toward local edits — and every local edit makes the next +upgrade harder, because I'm cherry-picking and re-applying my own changes against a new +drop instead of pulling cleanly. + +## Standing back + +When I step back, the pattern worries me more than any single issue. PAI depends heavily +on one person. Daniel almost certainly has other demands on his time, and that's +completely fair — but a sole architect with limited hours, plus a hand-cranked release +method, is fragile. I think you can see the cracks: community engagement has cooled, fixes +land slowly, and recent releases have felt rougher. + +Meanwhile, the ground is moving. Claude Code is evolving fast, and some of its new features +now overlap or even collide with what PAI provides — keeping the two in sync could be a +full-time job on its own. It's also worth asking, honestly, whether frontier models still +need a heavyweight harness to behave well. My own suspicion is that a clean Claude Code +install on something like Opus 4.7 may already be closing the gap. And the alternatives +have matured astonishingly quickly: OpenClaw and Hermes Agent both arrived recently and +have surged ahead on autonomous agency, UI options, popularity, and ecosystem — areas +where PAI now trails. + +I'll be honest: that leaves me genuinely sad. With PAI 5.0 — the "Life Operating System" — +already out, the decision in front of me isn't hypothetical. And rather than fight through +another big upgrade, I'm tempted to install and evaluate OpenClaw or Hermes Agent instead, +and then cherry-pick the PAI ideas I love into whichever one I land on. I don't *want* to +do that. But I can feel the pull. + +## Back to the future + +Here's where I get optimistic, because I don't think PAI's best days are behind it — I +think they're behind the wrong architecture. Daniel originally composed PAI out of +separate projects. I think the way forward is to go back to that unbundled spirit: +feature-level installs that drop cleanly into a wide range of harnesses — Claude Code, +Codex, OpenCode, Crush, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent, whatever comes next. This isn't a fantasy; +the community has already shown it works by porting PAI to OpenCode. PAI's real value is +its philosophy and its features, not its binding to one runtime. + +The second half is the development model. PAI should adopt an open process that genuinely +welcomes community contributions to accelerate major, minor, and patch releases — while +Daniel keeps firm hold of what only he should hold: the conceptual design, the +architecture, the roadmap, and the final say on what gets in. Lead the vision; let the +community carry more of the load. + +PAI shouldn't die a slow death, withering on the vine. To avoid that it has to evolve and +claim a place in the agentic ecosystem where it can actually thrive. The ecosystem needs +PAI's human-centric philosophy more than ever — it just needs it unbundled, opened up, and +free to travel. I'd love nothing more than to stay.