Design — radioactive-ralph

Vision

radioactive-ralph is a little runtime creature with a lot of different personalities who really wants to help any way he can.

The product should feel like:

• one binary you install

• one repo you initialize

• one durable planning/runtime surface

• many personalities you can ask Ralph to inhabit

The simplification

The repo got into trouble by trying to support too many identities at once:

• plugin

• marketplace add-on packaging

• binary

• detached sidecar transports

• provider-specific implementation

• provider-agnostic future

That is too many stories for one tool.

The correct story is:

• binary first

• personas in code

• repo service + socket IPC

• provider bindings as adapters, not product identity

Personality matters

The personalities are not fluff. They are a usable operator model.

Green, grey, red, blue, professor, fixit, immortal, savage, old-man, and world-breaker are different ways Ralph can help. The product should preserve that voice and intent while keeping the implementation source of truth inside the binary.

Provider direction

The runtime already ships a declarative provider layer in repo config so a repo can bind Ralph to whatever compatible agent CLI it wants, provided it defines:

• how to run the tool

• how to set model

• how to set effort

• how to append the persona/system prompt

• how to pass the operator/user prompt

• what structured output format the runtime should parse

Claude, Codex, and Gemini ship today. More providers should fit the same binding contract rather than forcing the product to reinvent itself around each vendor.