Your Persona, Your Way — Customize Without Forking

The Gap

You installed the coder persona. It ships with TDD, debugging, and code review. But you also want Chrome browser control for inspecting web pages. And you prefer the thinker soul's reasoning style over the default.

Before v0.14.9, you had two options:

1. Use it as-is — live without the skills you want
2. Fork the entire package — copy the persona directory, edit persona.json, maintain your fork forever

Neither is acceptable for daily use. Personas should bend to you, not the other way around.

One Command

> /persona add skill chrome-cdp

  + Added skill "chrome-cdp" to aiiware/coder

That's it. The skill is available immediately — no restart, no config file, no forking. The agent can now control Chrome via DevTools Protocol.

The Full Toolkit

# Add skills (any skill in ~/.aii/skills/ or .aii/skills/)
/persona add skill chrome-cdp

# Remove skills you don't need
/persona remove skill code-review

# Swap soul (available: thinker, doer, coder)
/persona set soul thinker

# Swap theme (available: classic, brand, teal, indigo, forest, amber, grayscale)
/persona set theme forest

# See what you changed
/persona show skills

# Start over
/persona reset

Every command takes effect instantly in your current session. The next agent turn already uses your customized persona.

What /persona show skills Looks Like

Persona: aiiware/coder v0.1.0
Skills (4):
    tdd                  Use for any software development — features, bug fixes, refactoring
    debug                Use when encountering bugs, test failures, or unexpected behavior
    code-review          Use when reviewing diffs, PRs, or code changes
  + chrome-cdp           Interact with local Chrome browser session

1 added via customization

Base skills show without a prefix. Skills you added are marked with +. Each skill shows its file path so you can inspect or edit the source.

How It Works: The Overlay Model

Customizations are stored as a diff layer — not a copy. Your base persona is never modified.

Base persona (from persona.json):

• Soul: coder
• Skills: tdd, debug, code-review
• Theme: classic

Your customizations (overlay):

• Added skills: chrome-cdp
• Soul override: thinker
• Theme override: forest

Merged result (what the agent actually uses):

• Soul: thinker
• Skills: tdd, debug, code-review, chrome-cdp
• Theme: forest

This means:

• Persona updates flow through. When the base persona ships a new version, your overlay applies on top of it automatically.
• Reset is instant. /persona reset deletes the overlay — back to the clean base.
• Per-persona isolation. Customize coder and doer independently. Switch between them — each keeps its own customizations.

Customizations Persist

By default, your changes are saved to ~/.aii/persona-customizations.json. They survive session restarts, persona switches, and CLI updates.

> /persona use doer          # switch to doer
> /persona use coder         # switch back — all coder customizations intact

Need a temporary change? Use --session:

> /persona add skill chrome-cdp --session

  + Added skill "chrome-cdp" to aiiware/coder (session-only)

Session-only changes disappear when the session ends. They're tagged in /persona status so you always know what's temporary.

/persona status Shows Everything

Persona: aiiware/coder v0.1.0 (built-in)
Soul: thinker (overridden) | Theme: forest (overridden) | Skills: 4 total
Customizations:
  + skill: chrome-cdp
  ~ soul: thinker (base: coder)
  ~ theme: forest (base: classic)

Markers tell you exactly what changed:

• + skill added
• - skill removed
• ~ value overridden (shows original)

CLI Works Too

Everything works from the terminal as a one-shot command:

aii persona add skill chrome-cdp
aii persona set soul thinker
aii persona show skills
aii persona reset

CLI changes are persisted and take effect on your next session.

Try It

npm install -g @aiiware/aii@latest
aii persona use coder
aii persona add skill chrome-cdp
aii persona show skills

Persona Customization ships in Aii CLI v0.14.9. Update with npm install -g @aiiware/aii@latest.