danielmiessler
Feature Request: Support for Isolated/Multi-Profile Installation (Non-Global Env Vars)
Hi Daniel!
Thank you again for new full v2 release. I am very excited to use PAI, more then anything else I've found for ages, to convert Claude Code into a general assistant.
I noticed the install converts your original claude install and this is a bit of an issue as im still wanting to learn and practice the default version as a beginner and not perform a "total conversion" on the original profile yet.
Therefore I thought it clever to make two separate instances of Claude Code (USER/claude-general/ being the new one intended for PAI) on WSL using XDG_DATA_HOME and CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR environment redirection to keep my "Coding" profile separate from my "General Assistant" profile so i could learn and use both separately.
The Issue:
Getting AI to analyse the new v2 (since I am a beginner and cant code) it seems the current install.ts script assumes a single-tenant setup. It automatically appends export PAI_DIR=... and DA=... to the global .bashrc / .zshrc. This "pollutes" the global environment, causing my primary Coding instance to accidentally inherit PAI configurations intended only for the secondary profile.
The Request:
Firstly is there a simple solution I could follow to let me install the full conversion, or achieve the exact same result manually, in the second jay\claude-general profile?
OR
Could you add a flag (e.g., --no-global-env or --target-profile-dir) to the installer? Ideally, this would: Install the files to a specified target directory. Skip writing to the global shell configuration file. Output the necessary environment variables to the console so I can manually add them to my specific shell alias/function scope instead. This would allow users to run PAI alongside a clean, vanilla Claude Code installation safely.
I am thinking other users may be interested in this ability as well perhaps. Thank you for this amazing tool!
PS: As a beginner I had to get AI to assist me with these explanations and requests above, best I can do at my level of knowledge therefore apologies if there are mistakes or dumb things, I just REALLY want to this work and wouldn't know what to ask otherwize.
Thank you for releasing this for us, its amazing.
