Portable AI Kit parity: match USB local-AI appliance capabilities with SourceOS governance

[mdheller]

Goal

Build SourceOS Portable AI Kit to match the practical user-facing capabilities of lightweight portable USB AI projects while exceeding them on governance, provenance, policy, and evidence.

Parity target

The baseline external pattern has:

• one-time USB/SSD setup;
• interactive model selection;
• curated local model menu;
• custom GGUF import;
• Ollama-compatible runtime;
• local chat UI;
• offline use after setup;
• USB-local chat/config/model state;
• preflight checks on Linux;
• Windows/macOS/Linux launch scripts;
• safe shutdown instructions;
• simple product promise.

SourceOS acceptance criteria

• sourceosctl portable-ai preflight or standalone sourceos-portable-ai preflight produces structured JSON evidence.
• portable-ai profiles lists tiny-router, laptop-safe, office-local, code-local, field-kit, and byom-gguf profiles.
• portable-ai prepare --dry-run renders the portable root layout plan.
• portable-ai prepare --execute --policy-ok creates only declared directories and writes PortableAIRoot manifest/evidence.
• portable-ai start-plan renders a runtime/surface launch plan without starting daemons.
• Model packs are represented by sourceos-model-carry manifests before route eligibility.
• Agent Machine owns activation, teardown, wipe, and runtime evidence.
• TurtleTerm is the first-class UI target; AgentTerm and BearBrowser are supported surfaces.
• Prompt egress is denied by default.
• Host writes are denied or explicitly scoped and auditable.
• BYOM GGUF import requires hash/provenance/license posture before route eligibility.
• README presents one obvious demo path.

Initial PRs

• Add Portable AI Kit CLI scaffold #16
• Define Portable AI carry pack contract sourceos-model-carry#7
• Define Portable AI runtime receipt integration agent-machine#15

Non-goals

• Do not market unsafe universal-compliance or uncensored behavior as the product value.
• Do not make SourceOS model-carry the model lifecycle authority.
• Do not start runtimes before Agent Machine activation gates exist.
• Do not download model weights implicitly.
• Do not store secrets or prompt bodies in evidence.