ianlanThe Packet family
Five projects that run on your own machine or your own server, hold their own keys, and tell you plainly what they cannot do yet.
At a glance
Status is the honest kind. Alpha means it works and you can use it, with rough edges. Early means the code is real but it is not yet usable end to end.
| Product | What it is | Status | Version | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PacketBench | Desktop agent development environment | Alpha | 0.13.2 | Public |
| PacketCode | Terminal coding agent, eleven built-in providers | Alpha | 0.5.1 | Public |
| PacketAgent | Self-hosted runtime for long-running workers | Alpha | 0.1.0 | Public |
| PacketChat | Self-hosted multi-user AI workspace | Alpha | 0.1.0 | Private |
| PacketRelay | Opaque WebSocket router | Early | 0.1.0 | Private |
The products
PacketBench
A local-first agent development environment. Multi-CLI workspaces backed by real PTYs, a bring-your-own-key agent picker, Flight Deck orchestration that runs parallel attempts across git worktrees, SSH remote workspaces with pinned host keys, an MCP hub that both consumes and publishes, project memory, and an issue board that syncs with GitHub, Gitea and Forgejo.
Every artifact so far is unsigned and there is no auto-updater, so expect a SmartScreen warning and manual upgrades.
PacketCode
A keyboard-first coding agent that lives in the terminal. It holds the conversation, tool execution, permission approvals, background agents and MCP connections in one TUI, and speaks to eleven built-in providers plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — hosted or local — rather than binding you to one.
The newest tag is 0.5.1 from May 2026, and the main branch is well ahead of it. The documentation describes main, not the tagged release.
PacketAgent
A runtime and operator workbench for workers — long-running agents woken by schedules, webhooks or alerts. Queue triggers are declared but not yet a verified ingress path. Each run carries explicit permissions, a budget, immutable checkpoints and an audit trail, and pauses for human approval when it needs one. It is the answer to what happens to agent work after the application that created it closes.
PacketChat
A private multi-user AI workspace for a small team: chats, projects, prompt libraries, knowledge bases with retrieval, and simple agents, all against admin-managed provider keys on your own infrastructure. Admin surfaces cover usage, audit and approvals.
Several surfaces are complete in the interface but not yet wired to a backend — file attachments in chat among them.
PacketRelay
An opaque WebSocket router. It moves frames between clients without inspecting them, across three protocols: a one-to-one bridge, a one-to-many broadcast, and authenticated multi-member rooms with signed identities and trust-on-first-use pinning.
All state is in process memory, so a restart drops every session. It does not encrypt payloads — that stays the client's job. A Railway deployment is live and healthy, but no product integration currently sends production traffic through it.
How they fit together
Less than the shared prefix suggests. This is the honest version.
PacketBench and PacketCode are independent. PacketBench can host a PacketCode terminal session like any other CLI, but the former PacketCode ACP agent-engine transport was removed. There is no current product-level integration contract between them.
PacketBench plans to use PacketRelay. The relay service and its protocols are implemented and deployed. PacketBench Remote Agents remains planned, so the client-side product surface and end-to-end integration are not yet shipped.
PacketAgent carries a PacketChat adapter. Real code with real tests, certified locally only — it has never been run against a live PacketChat deployment.
These are five projects by one author, not an integrated platform. They share a design sensibility — local-first, bring your own key, honest about limits — and, so far, very little code. Where an integration is planned rather than built, this page says so, and the documentation says so too.
Seven further tools live outside this family and share no code with it: Nodehouse, a community BBS; Syndicate, a control plane for coding agents; Sugar, a model-provider gateway; demarc, an AI phone receptionist; Blackbox AI, a persistent-world research workbench; Midnight, a self-hosted PaaS control plane; and its marketing site. All twelve are documented at docs.ianlan.dev.