LifeOS

The install + onboarding surface for LifeOS — the Life Operating System. One command takes a stranger on any harness from nothing to a working, personalized install whose Pulse dashboard already shows their current state vs ideal state — without making them adopt a whole new harness.

How it ships

LifeOS is distributed as one self-contained skill — the LifeOS/ directory is the entire distribution. Everything ships inside it: the orchestrator (SKILL.md, Workflows/, Tools/), the whole-system payload under install/, and the one-line bootstrap at install/install.sh. Nothing ships outside the skill — no release-root install.sh, no .claude/ clone.

The primary install is AI-native: give INSTALL.md (served at ourlifeos.ai/install) to your AI and say "install this." LifeOS is AI-native, so the install is too — you hand the doc (or its link) to whatever harness you already use, and your AI installs LifeOS on your OS and harness, with permission at each step. It's the same document a human can read and follow. INSTALL.md opens with a capability gate, drives the install Tools (which run under bun on any OS, not a shell), wires integration per-harness (honest about what each gets), then runs Setup → Interview.

A terminal shortcut stays for Claude Code on macOS/Linux:

curl -fsSL https://ourlifeos.ai/install.sh | bash

Both are served from the skill's own single sources of truth — INSTALL.md at the skill root, install/install.sh for the shell path (which hands off to the agentic /LifeOS setup). Two versions coexist and mean different things: the frontmatter version: is this skill's own component line (bumped by the maintainer-side BumpSkillVersions, which does not ship in the release), while the distribution version — what a user means by "LifeOS 7.x" — is the GitHub release tag and the LIFEOS_RELEASES/<version>/ parent dir. Never read the component line as the release number. The payload (skills, hooks, system prompt, Algorithm, docs, runtime tools) rides along under install/ and is placed during setup, with permission.

Workflow Routing

Trigger	Target
setup, /LifeOS setup, "install LifeOS", "integrate into my harness"	Workflows/Setup.md
interview, "onboard me", "run the interview", TELOS capture	Workflows/Interview.md
doctor, "check my install", "what's broken", "what capabilities are live"	run bun <configRoot>/LIFEOS/TOOLS/Doctor.ts (see INSTALL.md)
update, "update LifeOS", after a version bump	Workflows/Update.md
uninstall, "remove LifeOS"	Workflows/Uninstall.md

doctor is the one tool-backed route — it needs no workflow because Doctor.ts is self-describing: it prints the four capability states (live / broken / declined / stale) and the exact fix command for anything broken. Relay its table, offer the fix it names, and honor decline — a declined capability is a legitimate way to run LifeOS, never a defect to nag about.

Default flow (/LifeOS setup): Setup phase (system integration) → transitions into Interview phase (life onboarding). One continuous experience, two clearly-marked phases — setup is logistics, interview is meaning. Setup ALWAYS runs first; hooks must be wired before the interview seeds anything.

The two phases

Setup (logistics, first). Detect OS + harness → scan for conflicts and surface them → install prerequisites → overlay the system templates → scaffold the USER tree + link it → trust-gated hook install (show the exact change, back up settings.json, wait for yes) → activate the identity imports → verify with two evidence classes. Adapts to OS (macOS/Linux/Windows) and harness (Claude Code / Hermes / Cursor / OpenClaw).

Interview (meaning, second). Name the DA → principal identity → TELOS current state → TELOS ideal state → pull in external sources the user provides (existing notes, configs, exports) to enrich USER context → seed Pulse. By the end, the config tree is populated and Pulse shows real data, not empty scaffolding.

Hard rules

• Setup before Interview, always. Hooks/integration land before any onboarding write.
• Additive, never clobbering. install.sh touches only the LifeOS skill dir; setup writes are existsSync-guarded. Never overwrite or rm a populated dir or a foreign file.
• Permission before mutation. Hook install shows the exact change (file count + settings entries) and backs up settings.json first. Nothing changes without an explicit yes.
• Config root keeps its canonical name. The user tree lives under the config dir and is linked into the harness tree; "LifeOS" is the brand, the resolved config path does not rename (renaming it breaks the identity @-imports).
• Dev-tree refusal. The hook install refuses to run inside the LifeOS source repo (detected via dev-tree markers — the private maintenance skill present, or a recognized source-repo git remote). Never mutate the author's live system.

Gotchas

• The frontmatter version: is the COMPONENT line, not the release. Claude Code ignores it; the maintainer-side BumpSkillVersions (not shipped) maintains it at the source repo. The DISTRIBUTION version is the tag + LIFEOS_RELEASES/<version>/ + the install.sh fetch.
• install.sh is non-destructive by design. It installs only the LifeOS skill and backs up only a prior LifeOS skill — never the user's other skills, hooks, or config. The whole point is "bolt on, don't take over."
• Hooks are installed imperatively, with permission. A bare skill cannot auto-wire hooks; the setup workflow writes them into the user's harness explicitly, after showing what changes.
• Config is .toml, never .yaml. LifeosConfig.ts reads TOML; the legacy .yaml template was retired 2026-06-19.
• Cross-platform is solved at setup time, not statically. The setup conversation detects the OS + harness and tailors hook commands and paths — don't assume macOS.

Examples

• "install LifeOS" → install.sh drops the skill, then /LifeOS setup runs: detect env, surface conflicts, wire hooks with permission, scaffold the USER tree, then roll into the interview.
• "run the lifeos interview" → Interview workflow: capture TELOS + current/ideal state, pull in the user's sources, seed Pulse.
• "lifeos doctor" → run Doctor.ts, relay the capability table, offer the fix command for anything broken.
• "update LifeOS" → Update workflow: idempotent re-overlay after a version bump, non-destructive.