agent-persona

Personalise your Claude CLI to how you actually work.

Claude is powerful out of the box, but it starts every session not knowing you: your stack, your coding style, or how you like to be corrected. agent-persona learns that from your own Claude sessions and shell history, builds a persona on this machine, and injects it into every new session.

No configuration, no manual writing, and no API key required.

Install

pipx install agent-persona
agent-persona run

run builds your persona and asks whether to bind it to all future sessions. Say yes and you are done.

What it looks like

An excerpt from a real generated persona (agent-persona show):

### Layer 1 - Stable Identity
- CLI-first: lives entirely in the terminal (git, ssh, shell scripts, CLI agents)
- Ships fast, verifies after: tests the published artifact rather than simulating locally
- Trusts `git log` as ground truth: inspects history after nearly every pull
- Prefers small, confirmable edits over large sweeping changes

### Layer 2 - Technical Knowledge Map
**Git** ★★★★☆
Needs: worktree workflows, multi-remote sync edge cases, history rewriting risks
Skip: what pull/stash/log do, basic branching, commit syntax

### Negative Prompt
- Never restate the user's request before acting on it.
- Never present a menu of options when asked for an opinion. Recommend one.
- Never treat typos as blockers. Infer intent and proceed.

Claude reads this at the start of every session, so it stops explaining basics you know, pitches answers at your level, and avoids the things that annoy you.

What it learns

Python collects the raw data deterministically (session transcripts, tool usage, shell history, all secret-redacted). Then Claude itself, via claude --print using the Claude Code login you already have, synthesizes a structured persona:

• Stable identity: who you are as an engineer.
• Knowledge map: star ratings per technology, what to explain and what to skip.
• Thinking style: how you learn and what order explanations should follow.
• Output preferences: formats you want, formats that annoy you.
• Decision framework: what you optimise for when choosing between approaches.
• Curiosity profile: the kinds of questions you actually ask.
• Communication: what Claude should and should never do.
• Hard boundaries: actions Claude must never take on your behalf.

No keyword matching and no NLP heuristics: Claude reads your actual history and writes the profile.

How it works

~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonl + shell history
        |
Deterministic collectors (pure Python)
        |
claude --print
        |
~/.agent-persona/persona.md
        |
~/.claude/CLAUDE.md @import

Injection uses Claude Code's native @file import: one marker-delimited line in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md that Claude reads at every session start. A single Stop hook in ~/.claude/settings.json re-runs synthesis when a session ends, so the persona grows as you work.

Your persona

Everything lives in ~/.agent-persona/, on this machine, as plain files you can read and edit:

~/.agent-persona/
├── persona.md   # your persona, the single source of truth
└── state.json   # tracks which sessions were processed

To move machines, copy persona.md across and run agent-persona install.

Commands

Detach anytime

agent-persona adds one marker-delimited block to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md and one Stop hook. agent-persona uninstall removes exactly those and nothing else; your own CLAUDE.md content is never touched. Add --purge to wipe the persona store too.

Privacy

• Your data never leaves this machine except the synthesis call to claude --print, your already-authenticated Claude Code instance.
• API keys, tokens, and passwords are redacted from every data stream before synthesis.
• No cloud, no telemetry, no accounts.

Fallback: API key

To run synthesis headless (CI, cron) without a Claude Code session, set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY and it falls back to the Anthropic API:

pip install "agent-persona[api]"
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
agent-persona run

What it does not do

• No writes to your project files or code.
• One global persona, not per-project.
• No GUI.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Claude CLI installed and authenticated
• macOS, Linux, or Windows

License

MIT