PAI Documentation

Welcome to the PAI docs. PAI is a portable, USB-bootable personal AI operating system. These pages cover installation, day-to-day use, architecture, and how to contribute.

Pick a route

Not sure where to begin? Choose whichever path matches your intent:

1. I want to try PAI right now → head to the quickstart. Zero to a running session in under ten minutes.
2. I want to understand what PAI is first → read getting-started.md for a story-style introduction and mental model.
3. I want to build from source or contribute → start with development/setup.md and the repo CONTRIBUTING.md.

Navigation by role

User

• quickstart.md — flash, boot, first prompt
• getting-started.md — concepts and first session
• usb-flashing.md — detailed flashing per OS
• editions.md — which ISO to choose
• troubleshooting.md — when things go sideways

Contributor

• ../CONTRIBUTING.md — how to contribute
• development/setup.md — dev environment
• ../ARCHITECTURE.md — system overview
• ../GOVERNANCE.md — decision-making
• ../MAINTAINERS.md — who owns what

Researcher

• architecture.md — technical architecture
• ../DESIGN_DECISIONS.md — rationale
• adr/ — architecture decision records
• ../BENCHMARKS.md — performance data
• ../SECURITY.md — threat model

Agent

• ../SKILLS.md — skill catalog
• ../TOOLS.md — tool inventory
• ../PHILOSOPHY.md — design principles
• ../GLOSSARY.md — terminology
• ../VALUES.md — project values

What's new

The most recent released version is 0.1.0 — 2025-04-17. See ../CHANGELOG.md for the full history and ../MIGRATION.md for version-transition notes.