Pad

Project Management for the agent era.

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One binary. Local-first. No accounts required. 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.

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, dark-themed interface at localhost:7777 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, formatting toolbar, and auto-save
• Wiki-links — type [[Title]] to link between items
• Real-time updates — agent creates a task in the terminal, it appears in the browser instantly (via SSE)
• Dashboard — collection overview, active work, plan tracking, activity feed

For AI Agents

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.

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

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Codex, 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. All agent actions are attributed in the activity feed, so you always know what the AI changed.

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:

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+.

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.

Single user, more than one device? Publish to all interfaces so you can reach Pad from your phone, tablet, or another machine on the same LAN, Tailscale network, or home VPN:

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

For multi-instance deployments, Pad supports Postgres + Redis via docker-compose.yml — see docs/deployment.md for the full setup.

Binary Download

Pre-built binaries for macOS, Linux, and Windows are available on the releases page.

Pad Cloud (hosted)

Don't want to run anything? Pad Cloud is the managed option — same product, same CLI, same /pad skill, free during beta. Sign up on the web, then connect a project directory:

pad init --url https://app.getpad.dev --workspace my-workspace

Self-hosting stays first-class: the binary is unchanged and no features are Cloud-only.

Getting Started

1. Set up Pad

cd ~/projects/myapp
pad init "My App"

pad init is the smart entry point that handles everything in one command:

• Configures this client's connection (local server, remote, or Docker)
• Auto-starts the local server
• Creates the first admin account on a fresh local install (Docker / remote hosts run pad auth setup on the server instead)
• Logs you in if needed
• Creates or links a workspace for the current directory (writes .pad.toml)
• Installs the /pad skill for any AI tools detected in the project

Run from your project root. Safe to re-run anytime — it skips finished steps and prints a status summary if nothing's needed.

Choose a template with --template, or omit it for an interactive picker grouped by category (Software / People / …):

pad workspace init --list-templates                   # See the full catalog grouped by category
pad init "My App" --template scrum                    # Scrum-style with sprints
pad init "My App" --template product                  # Product management focused
pad init "My Hiring" --template hiring                # Company-side: requisitions, candidates, interview loops, feedback
pad init "Job Search" --template interviewing         # Candidate-side: applications, interviews, companies, contacts

Pad ships templates for software (startup / scrum / product), people workflows (hiring, interviewing), and has reserved categories for research, content, operations, and personal use so the same project-management primitives fit well beyond code projects.

2. Start working

# From the CLI
pad item create task "Set up CI pipeline" --priority high
pad item create idea "Add WebSocket support" --category infrastructure
pad project dashboard

# From the web UI
pad server open              # Opens localhost:7777 in your browser

# From your AI agent
# Just use /pad in Claude Code, Cursor, etc.

3. Teach your agents the rules

In an agent session inside the workspace:

/pad onboard

The agent walks an interview, detects your tooling, and adapts the workspace's collections, conventions, roles, and playbooks. To browse the library directly:

pad library list --type conventions  # Pre-built conventions you can adopt
pad library list --type playbooks    # Pre-built multi-step workflows

4. Optional — connect a desktop AI app via MCP

Pad ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server so Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf can manage items, plans, ideas, and dependencies as native tools, read workspace state by URL, and load multi-step workflows as prompts.

pad mcp install claude-desktop   # or: cursor, windsurf, --all
# Restart the client; pad shows up as the "pad" MCP server.

Tool catalog (v0.4) — eight resource × action tools plus pad_set_workspace (nine total), no flat verb explosion:

Plus resources at pad://workspaces, pad://workspace/{ws}/dashboard, pad://workspace/{ws}/items, pad://workspace/{ws}/items/{ref}, pad://workspace/{ws}/collections, pad://workspace/{ws}/bootstrap, and pad://_meta/version.

Stability contract — two version constants, both advertised in the initialize handshake under capabilities.experimental.padCmdhelp and capabilities.experimental.padToolSurface (and queryable at pad://_meta/version):

• cmdhelp_version: "0.1" — CLI help-tree contract (used at dispatch time)
• tool_surface_version: "0.4" — MCP tool catalog contract (PLAN-1410 trimmed the bootstrap-response shape by ~40%; see internal/mcp/version.go for the full v0.4 changelog)

External agents pin against these so a future rename doesn't break them silently. Errors come back as structured envelopes (`{error: {code, message, hint, available_workspaces, ...}