cs.HCApr 9, 2026

PSI: Shared State as the Missing Layer for Coherent AI-Generated Instruments in Personal AI Agents

Authors: Zhiyuan Wang, Erzhen Hu, Mark Rucker, Laura E. Barnes

Organizations: University of Virginia Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Abstract

Personal AI tools can now be generated from natural-language requests, but they often remain isolated after creation. We present PSI, a shared-state architecture that turns independently generated modules into coherent instruments: persistent, connected, and chat-complementary artifacts accessible through both GUIs and a generic chat agent. By publishing current state and write-back affordances to a shared personal-context bus, modules enable cross-module reasoning and synchronized actions across interfaces. We study PSI through a three-week autobiographical deployment in a self-developed personal AI environment and show that later-generated instruments can be integrated automatically through the same contract. PSI identifies shared state as the missing systems layer that transforms AI-generated personal software from isolated apps into coherent personal computing environments.

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