The most interesting AI software being built right now isn't the model. It's the loop around the model — validate, lock, run, compress, repeat. Liminal is that loop, made visible, owned, and yours.

140+
Tools
2
UIs (TUI + Web)
$0
License (MIT)
~90s
Install time
Any
LLM provider
0
Required accounts

What we're shipping

Liminal AI is a model-agnostic agent harness. Everything you need to run a real agent on real software work:

  • A ReAct loop with retries, provider circuit breakers, context compression, drift scoring, resumable streaming writes, and approval gates on destructive tools.
  • Lazy-loaded tool families — files, shell, git, code intelligence (semantic rename), web, browser, Obsidian vault, document engine (PPTX/DOCX/PDF), and more.
  • Memory that compounds — typed notes, hybrid BM25 + vector recall, recipe library for successful multi-tool turns, optional background auto-dream consolidation.
  • A persona system — voice, behaviors, and a themed web shell from a single bootstrap prompt.
  • Two UIs — Ink terminal for keyboard-driven work; Express + React web UI streaming tool calls over SSE.

Why a harness, not a hosted agent

Three things bother us about hosted agent products:

  1. They're opaque — you can't see why a tool fired or what's in memory.
  2. They lock the model — you can't swap DeepSeek for Claude on the same workload.
  3. They take margin on spend — every token is marked up through their layer.

Liminal is the inverse: open source, local-first, JSONL session traces, MIT licensed.

The trade

You run it yourself — Node.js 22+, a provider key, a few minutes of setup. In exchange you get a serious harness with infrastructure that survives the failure modes that kill most demos.

How to try it

  1. Install (macOS / Linux / WSL)

    curl -fsSL https://vireondynamics.com/install/install.sh | bash

  2. Install (Windows PowerShell)

    irm https://vireondynamics.com/install/install.ps1 | iex

  3. Add your API key

    The wizard configures OpenRouter or another OpenAI-compatible provider.

  4. Open the UI

    Terminal or web — same harness underneath.
Full install guide →Step-by-step setup, doctor checks, and first session tips. Compare with Cursor & ChatGPT →When a local agent beats a hosted chat product.

Try Liminal on your machine

Free, MIT licensed, one-command install. No account required.

Install guideProduct overview

We've been building this for months. v0.1 is the foundation — feedback welcome on GitHub or admin@vireondynamics.com.

— The Vireon Dynamics team