Kai

A minimal, terminal-first Linux distribution based on Debian.

Philosophy

• Extremely minimal and intentional
• Terminal-first workflow
• Lightweight graphical layer (suckless tools)
• Privacy-conscious defaults
• No bloat

Build

# Linux (Debian/Ubuntu host)
sudo ./build/build.sh

# macOS (Apple Silicon — runs the build inside a QEMU VM)
brew install qemu cdrtools
./build/build.sh

The target architecture auto-detects from the host. Override with KAI_ARCH=arm64 or KAI_ARCH=amd64. Output lands in dist/ as kai-<version>-<arch>-<codename>-<timestamp>.iso with a SHA256 checksum.

Test in QEMU

./build/test.sh

Burn to USB

lsblk                          # identify the device
sudo ./build/burn.sh /dev/sdX

The ISO is a hybrid BIOS+UEFI image — boot from your BIOS boot menu.

The kai Command

The installed system exposes a kai dispatcher:

kai chat       start a local LLM conversation
kai pull       download a model
kai list       list downloaded models
kai rm         remove a model
kai cal        open the calendar
kai notes      open notes
kai serve      start local inference server
kai install    install kai to disk (live mode only)
kai upgrade    pull updates from apt.wrklabs.org
kai config     system settings
kai version    show version

License

GPL-2.0