pad

---

One binary. Local-first. No sign-up. Pad gives you a CLI, a web UI, and an AI agent skill — all backed by SQLite, all running on your machine. Your project data stays on your laptop — unless you take it to Pad Cloud.

Quick Start

brew install PerpetualSoftware/tap/pad
cd your-project
pad init                    # configure, auth, workspace, AI skill — all in one
pad server open             # opens the web UI at localhost:7777

pad init is the smart entry point — it auto-detects what's needed, walks you through each step, and is safe to re-run anytime (it skips finished steps and prints a status summary).

Then, in a fresh agent session in your project, say:

/pad onboard

Your new workspace ships with the canonical onboard playbook auto-activated. The agent walks an interview, inspects your codebase if it has shell access, and adapts your workspace's collections, conventions, roles, and playbooks to match the project. It's the fastest way to go from empty workspace to "okay, this is mine."

Why Pad?

Tools like Linear, Jira, and Notion are built for teams on the cloud. Pad is built for developers on their machine — and for the AI agents working alongside them. When you do want your projects on every device or a teammate on the board, Pad Cloud hosts the same product with sync, workspace invites, and role-based access. A self-hosted workspace moves there by export and import; see the move-to-Cloud guide.

	Pad	Linear / Jira	Notion
Setup	pad init	Create account, invite team, configure	Create account, pick template
AI agents	Native /pad skill for 7+ tools	Third-party integrations	Third-party integrations
Data	Local SQLite you own — or opt-in Pad Cloud	Their cloud	Their cloud
Offline	Full functionality	Read-only cache at best	Limited
CLI	First-class	Afterthought	None
Price	Free, open source	Per-seat pricing	Per-seat pricing

Features

For Developers

CLI that doesn't get in your way. Create tasks, search items, check status — without leaving the terminal.

pad item create task "Fix OAuth redirect" --priority high
pad item create idea "Real-time collaboration" --category infrastructure
pad item list tasks --status in-progress
pad item search "authentication"
pad project dashboard                   # Project dashboard
pad project next                        # What should I work on?
pad server info                         # How this client is connected to Pad

Web UI that stays out of your way. A clean interface at localhost:7777, in dark and light themes, with:

• Board, list, and table views — drag-and-drop between status columns
• Keyboard navigation — j/k to move, Enter to open, Esc to go back, Cmd+K to search
• Rich text editor — Tiptap-based with markdown and auto-save, and real-time co-editing
• Wiki-links — type [[Title]] to link between items
• Real-time updates — an agent creates a task in the terminal, it appears in the browser instantly
• History — every change is versioned, with who made it: a person, or a named agent
• Dashboard — active work, plan progress, what needs attention, and what to do next

For AI Agents

Using Claude Code? Install the Pad plugin. It bundles the /pad skill, typed shortcuts (/pad:status, /pad:capture, /pad:onboard), live item notifications and a side panel (/pad-pane), and it updates itself:

/plugin marketplace add PerpetualSoftware/pad
/plugin install pad@pad

In the Claude Desktop app's Code tab: + → Plugins, add the marketplace PerpetualSoftware/pad, then install pad. Open the panel with /pad-pane. If nothing is set up yet, it walks you through connecting to Pad Cloud, installing Pad on this machine, or linking your own server. The panel needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later; the skills work on any version.

Your agent becomes a project partner. Install the /pad skill once, and your AI coding tool can read, create, and update project items through natural language. Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, and OpenCode receive a compact dispatcher, reuse bootstrapped context within a conversation, and load detailed guidance by topic with pad agent guide, keeping routine turns small.

pad agent install        # Auto-detects your tools and installs the skill

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, OpenCode, GitHub Copilot, Amazon Q, and JetBrains Junie.

Then just talk to your project:

> /pad what should I work on next?
> /pad I finished the OAuth fix
> /pad create a task to add rate limiting
> /pad let's brainstorm about the API redesign

Conventions and playbooks teach agents how your project works:

• Conventions — trigger-based rules like "run tests before marking a task done" or "use conventional commits"
• Playbooks — multi-step workflows like "when implementing a feature: read the spec, create a branch, write tests first, then implement". Playbooks can declare a kebab-case invocation_slug so users can invoke them directly: /pad ship PLAN-42, /pad release 0.5.0. Fresh startup workspaces ship a generic ship playbook out of the box.

pad item create convention "Run tests before completing tasks" \
  --field trigger=on-task-complete \
  --field scope=all \
  --field priority=must

Agents load relevant conventions automatically, and every agent action is attributed in the activity feed — so you can see what the AI changed rather than finding it later in a diff.

Name your agents. An agent that identifies itself gets its name on its writes: in the activity feed, the dashboard, item timelines and the admin audit log. Pad takes the first of these it finds:

pad session register --agent rook   # 0. this session's registered name
# 1. agent_name = "reviewer" in .pad.toml (per workspace, committed)
export PAD_AGENT=reviewer           # 2. per process
# 3. otherwise the detected runtime, e.g. "claude-code"

With none of these, the write is recorded as the person whose credentials it used. The name is self-declared, so it labels a trail rather than proving who acted; provenance surfaces show both, e.g. reviewer (via Dana). pad session list shows which registered sessions on this machine are alive, and as which agent.

Onboard agents to a new codebase:

Open an agent session in the workspace directory and run /pad onboard. The agent walks an interview, detects your build/test/CI tooling, and adapts your workspace's collections, conventions, roles, and playbooks to match the project. Works for any agent that speaks Pad — Claude Code, MCP-only agents, etc.

Collections & Custom Fields

Pad organizes work into collections — typed containers with structured fields.

Built-in collections:

Collection	Purpose
Tasks	Work items with status, priority, assignee, effort, due date
Ideas	Feature ideas with impact and category
Plans	Project milestones with progress tracking
Docs	Documentation, decisions, reference material
Conventions	Project rules that guide agent behavior
Playbooks	Multi-step workflows for agents to follow

Create your own with typed fields — select, text, date, number, url, relation, checkbox:

pad collection create "Bug Reports" \
  --fields "severity:select:low,medium,high,critical; browser:text; reproducible:checkbox"

Items get reference numbers automatically (TASK-5, BUG-12) and can be moved between collections with field migration.

Installation

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install PerpetualSoftware/tap/pad

Build from Source

git clone https://github.com/PerpetualSoftware/pad
cd pad
make build
cp pad ~/.local/bin/   # or /usr/local/bin/

Requires Go 1.26+ and Node.js 22+. Alternatively, nix develop provides a shell with the exact Go and Node versions pinned — see the Nix section below.

The go install github.com/PerpetualSoftware/pad/cmd/pad@latest path is not supported for the full Pad binary, because the web UI must be built and embedded during the source build.

Docker

docker run -p 127.0.0.1:7777:7777 -v pad-data:/data ghcr.io/perpetualsoftware/pad

This publishes Pad to localhost:7777 on the host machine, which is the recommended default for local use.

Pin a version for anything you keep. The untagged name is latest, which moves to each new stable release (never a release candidate) the next time the image is pulled. Name the release instead, as a bare version with no leading v, for example ghcr.io/perpetualsoftware/pad:0.17.2, and change the tag when you choose to upgrade. Every published image is multi-arch and cosign-signed.