New Feature: Intelligent PAI Update System (/paiupdate)

[danielmiessler]

Intelligent PAI Update System

We just shipped a major quality-of-life feature: intelligent sideloading for PAI updates.

The Problem

When you customize PAI—rename your DA, add skills, modify hooks, tweak settings—you face a dilemma every time we release updates:

• Pull updates → Risk losing your customizations
• Don't pull → Miss out on improvements and fixes
• Manual merge → Tedious, error-prone, time-consuming

The Solution: /paiupdate

Now you can run a single command and let your DA intelligently analyze and merge updates:

# In Claude Code:
/paiupdate    # or just /pa

How It Works

1. Fetch — Downloads latest PAI to .claude/pai_updates/ staging area (doesn't touch your files)
2. Analyze — Your DA compares upstream vs. your customizations
3. Report — Generates a personalized breakdown:
   • 🔴 Conflicts — Files you've modified that also changed upstream
   • 🟢 Safe Updates — Files you haven't touched (auto-update)
   • 🆕 New Features — New skills, agents, commands available
   • 📝 Your Customizations — Confirms your custom files are protected
4. Decide — You choose what to adopt (all, selective, conservative, or defer)
5. Execute — Your DA performs the merge with automatic backups
6. Validate — Checks everything still works

Key Features

• Your DA does the thinking — Recommendations are personalized to your system and goals
• Never blindly overwrites — Your env.DA, custom env vars, and personal settings are respected
• Smart settings merge — Adds new keys while preserving your values
• Automatic backups — Creates timestamped backups before any modifications
• Works with forks — Handles the common case of forking PAI and customizing
• ZIP download support — Even works if you didn't clone via git

Code Changes

New Files

.claude/commands/paiupdate.md — The main update command (208 lines)

• Full 7-phase workflow: fetch → analyze → report → decide → execute → validate → cleanup
• Handles edge cases: first-time sync, significant divergence, breaking changes, non-git installs

.claude/commands/pa.md — Shortcut alias

Modified Files

.gitignore — Added exclusions:

# PAI Update System (sideloading)
.claude/pai_updates/
.claude/pai_backups/
.claude/.pai-sync-history

.claude/commands/README.md — Documented the new commands

README.md — Added "Updating PAI" section with usage instructions

Example Output

When you run /paiupdate, you'll see something like:

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║                     PAI UPDATE AVAILABLE                          ║
║                     Upstream: b70e808                             ║
║                     Your version: dabaea9                         ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ SUMMARY                                                           ║
║ • 3 new skills available                                          ║
║ • 8 files updated upstream                                        ║
║ • 1 conflict with your customizations                             ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣

🔴 REQUIRES ATTENTION
• hooks/stop-hook.ts — You modified this, upstream also changed
  Recommendation: Merge compatible (your changes can wrap new logic)

🟢 SAFE TO AUTO-UPDATE
• skills/Research/Research.md
• skills/Fabric/Fabric.md
• (6 more files...)

🆕 NEW FEATURES
• skills/GeminiResearcher/ — Multi-perspective research
• agents/gemini-coder.md — Complex refactoring specialist

What would you like to do?
[A] Apply all safe updates + add all new features
[S] Step through each change individually
[C] Conservative - only safe updates
[N] Not now - keep staging for later

Why This Matters

PAI is meant to be your system. You should customize it extensively—that's the point. But you also shouldn't have to choose between staying current and keeping your work.

This update system means you can confidently customize PAI knowing that future updates won't blow away your work. Your AI helps you adopt improvements intelligently.

---

Try it out: Pull the latest PAI and run /paiupdate (or /pa) in Claude Code!

Questions or feedback? Drop them in this thread.

[mellanon]

Nice work! That'll definitely make things easier.

[jlpedersen]

Well done Daniel. Thank you for all the hard work on this. Do you have an active initiative to remote any hard coded references to Kai? I didn't see anything under issues. That's really the one thing holding me back from adopting this. I tried about a month ago and there was quite a bit still related to Kai. I tried to have my DA fix it but then it started renaming the KAI files as well. lol

[danielmiessler]

I think I cleaned most of that up. Let me take a look right now.

…

On Wed, Dec 10, 2025 at 9:09 PM, jlpedersen < ***@***.*** > wrote: Well done Daniel. Thank you for all the hard work on this. Do you have an active initiative to remote any hard coded references to Kai? I didn't see anything under issues. That's really the one thing holding me back from adopting this. I tried about a month ago and there was quite a bit still related to Kai. I tried to have my DA fix it but then it started renaming the KAI files as well. lol — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub ( #169 (comment) ) , or unsubscribe ( https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAMLXUS47RDX5VFA45HH4L4BD4BZAVCNFSM6AAAAACONBCAIGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMRSGY3TSOI ). You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Message ID: <danielmiessler/Personal_AI_Infrastructure/repo-discussions/169/comments/15226799 @ github. com>

[jlpedersen]

I am not sure its worth making it a priority (especially compared to the folder install issue). I am seeing a count of 68 of them here:

https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Adanielmiessler%2FPersonal_AI_Infrastructure%20kai&type=code

But many of them are by design: examples: PAI_Contract / PAI_Sync_Guide. Let me dig into these files one by one and see if I can find anything that "needs" to be changed before it consumes a bunch of your time.

[danielmiessler]

Kai is on it.

…

On Wed, Dec 10, 2025 at 10:19 PM, jlpedersen < ***@***.*** > wrote: I am not sure its worth making it a priority (especially compared to the folder install issue ( #172 ) ). I am seeing a count of *68* of them here: *https:/ / github. com/ search?q=repo%3Adanielmiessler%2FPersonal_AI_Infrastructure%20kai&type=code ( https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Adanielmiessler%2FPersonal_AI_Infrastructure%20kai&type=code )* But many of them are by design PAI_Contract / PAI_Sync_Guide. Let me dig into these files one by one and see if I can find anything that "needs" to be changed before it consumes a bunch of your time. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub ( #169 (reply in thread) ) , or unsubscribe ( https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAMLXQCRM6JOHTDW5SWYKT4BEEHFAVCNFSM6AAAAACONBCAIGVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTKMRSG4ZDKMQ ). You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Message ID: <danielmiessler/Personal_AI_Infrastructure/repo-discussions/169/comments/15227252 @ github. com>