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.

500+
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://www.vireondynamics.com/install/install.sh | bash

  2. Install (Windows PowerShell)

    irm https://www.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 to use (FSL-1.1-MIT), 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