# PAI Distribution Bug: Missing Files and Phantom References

[Steffen025]

PAI Distribution Bug: Missing Files and Phantom References

Summary

After a vanilla PAI installation (2026-01-03) and updating to the latest version (2026-01-04), we found missing workflow files and phantom skill references in the source distribution.

Affected Repository: Daniel Miessler's PAI Architecture
Source Location: ~/pai-source/ (pulled latest 2026-01-04, commit 5408c76)

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Issue 1: CreateSkill Workflows Missing from Source

Severity: CRITICAL - Prevents skill creation entirely

The kai-core-install pack includes CreateSkill/SKILL.md which references 3 workflow files that don't exist in the distribution:

kai-core-install/src/skills/CreateSkill/
└── SKILL.md  (references non-existent workflows)

SKILL.md routing table references:

Workflow	File	Status
CreateSkill	Workflows/CreateSkill.md	MISSING
ValidateSkill	Workflows/ValidateSkill.md	MISSING
CanonicalizeSkill	Workflows/CanonicalizeSkill.md	MISSING

Workaround: Recover from PAI 1.x

Complete implementations exist in PAI 1.x installations. We recovered and adapted them:

# Source: PAI 1.x installation
SOURCE="/Users/steffen/.claude/skills/CreateSkill/workflows"

# Target: PAI 2.x installation
TARGET="$PAI_DIR/skills/CreateSkill/Workflows"

# Create Workflows directory
mkdir -p "$TARGET"

# Copy and adapt each workflow
for file in CreateSkill.md ValidateSkill.md CanonicalizeSkill.md; do
  cp "$SOURCE/$file" "$TARGET/$file"

  # Adapt path syntax for PAI 2.x
  sed -i '' 's/\${PAI_DIR}/\$PAI_DIR/g' "$TARGET/$file"
  sed -i '' 's/workflows\//Workflows\//g' "$TARGET/$file"
  sed -i '' 's/tools\//Tools\//g' "$TARGET/$file"
done

# Also copy UpdateSkill.md (bonus workflow from 1.x)
cp "$SOURCE/UpdateSkill.md" "$TARGET/UpdateSkill.md"
sed -i '' 's/\${PAI_DIR}/\$PAI_DIR/g' "$TARGET/UpdateSkill.md"
sed -i '' 's/workflows\//Workflows\//g' "$TARGET/UpdateSkill.md"
sed -i '' 's/tools\//Tools\//g' "$TARGET/UpdateSkill.md"

Key adaptations:

• ${PAI_DIR} → $PAI_DIR (different variable syntax)
• workflows/ → Workflows/ (TitleCase convention)
• tools/ → Tools/ (TitleCase convention)

After recovery, update SKILL.md to include UpdateSkill in the routing table.

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Issue 2: Phantom Skill References

Severity: MEDIUM - Dead code, causes confusion

File: kai-core-install/src/tools/GenerateSkillIndex.ts

const ALWAYS_LOADED_SKILLS = ['CORE', 'Development', 'Research'];

Referenced Skill	Exists?
CORE	Yes
Development	NO
Research	NO

Recommendation: Remove phantom references or create placeholder skills:

const ALWAYS_LOADED_SKILLS = ['CORE', 'Agents'];

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Fixed in Upstream (Thank You!)

• SpawnParallelAgents.md - Added to kai-agents-skill pack
• kai-browser-skill v1.1.0 - New pack with Playwright browser automation

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Environment

Platform: macOS Darwin 24.6.0
Bun: 1.3.5
Installation: 2026-01-03
Last Pull: 2026-01-04

Installed Packs (9):
kai-hook-system, kai-history-system, kai-core-install,
kai-prompting-skill, kai-agents-skill, kai-art-skill,
kai-voice-system, kai-observability-server, kai-browser-skill

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Offer to Contribute

We have the 4 recovered workflow files adapted for PAI 2.x. Happy to submit a PR:

1. CreateSkill.md - Step-by-step skill creation
2. ValidateSkill.md - Structure validation checklist
3. CanonicalizeSkill.md - Skill standardization workflow
4. UpdateSkill.md - Modify existing skills

All files follow SkillSystem.md canonical structure with TitleCase naming.

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Reported by: Steffen
Diagnosed by: Jeremy (PAI assistant)
Date: 2026-01-04

[danielmiessler]

Update: The phantom skill references (Issue 2) have now been fixed in commit d5992dd.

Removed 'Development' and 'Research' from the ALWAYS_LOADED_SKILLS array in GenerateSkillIndex.ts since those skills don't exist.

Thanks again for the thorough report!