pkai-agent

A starter kit for your own personal AI agent — a persistent, file-based companion-assistant you chat with through Claude Code.

You download the zip, unzip it, open it in Claude Code (in a terminal app), and on first run your new assistant introduces itself, asks you to pick its name, checks that your setup is healthy, and walks you through the rest — including handling the technical bits, like version control, quietly on its own.

What the starter kit gets you

A personal AI assistant that lives on your own computer in ordinary files you can read — with a name you choose, a memory that carries across conversations, and a home folder for the work you do together. Not a chatbot in a browser tab: an assistant that's yours, that remembers, and that you can take with you.

How this goes

Install Claude Code — the terminal version (specifically the terminal version, not the desktop or web app), using the instructions for your computer at code.claude.com. One Mac gotcha: at the end, the installer shows a "Setup notes" line to copy and paste back into the same terminal window — do that, or the claude command won't be found.
Make an Assistants folder in your home directory — ~/Assistants/ on Mac, or C:\Users\<you>\Assistants\ on Windows.
Put the kit there — download the zip below and unzip it into that folder (or clone the repo, if git is a thing you do).
Open your terminal, go to the kit's folder, and run claude. Say hi. Your new assistant introduces itself, asks what to call it, and walks you through the rest.

The first time you run claude, it will ask you to sign in and choose a plan. At some point you'll also be able to choose which Claude model you're working with. Model choices change quickly — new models arrive every few months — so don't agonize: Sonnet 5 is a good choice to get started with. Later, once you and your assistant are working well together, ask for current advice — your assistant itself, the folks who pointed you here, or the PKAI community — about whether a different model better fits the work you're actually doing.

An alternative, if you'd like company: run Claude Code in a different folder first, and ask it to look over the starter kit and set your assistant up with you interactively — it can handle the folder placement and renaming for you.

Download

Current release: v1.2.0.

Download v1.2.0 (zip)

Unzip into your Assistants folder (see "How this goes" above). Then open the folder in Claude Code and say hi — your assistant takes it from there, including offering to rename its folder to something that's yours.

Source and links

GitHub repository — full source, history, and the README.
Issues — bug reports, questions, suggestions.
License — Mozilla Public License 2.0.
Participation waiver — please read before first run; your agent will ask you to agree to it.

What's in the box

A genericized persona at CLAUDE.md. The same shape as the personal agents some PKAI members already run, but stripped of person-specific content so it can become yours.
A memory system at memory/. Plain markdown files your agent reads at the start of every session and writes to as you teach it things.
Working directories for projects, inbox, outbox, sessions, schedule, and briefings. Use what you need; ignore what you don't.
Embedded PKAI starter wikis covering Claude Code, terminals, Markdown editors, Git, Obsidian, and project management — your assistant can walk you through them at your pace.

Questions? Email Pete or open an issue.