12 ms·

Pi – A minimal terminal coding harness

608 points by kristianpaul 8mo ago

cyanydeez 8mo ago
The backing to OpenClaw/MoltBot whatever they're calling themselves. Why is it insecure, well, Pi tells you >No permission popups. Anyway, even if you give your agent permission, there's no secure way to know whether what they're asking to is what they'll actually do, etc.
- himata4113 8mo ago
  you want to put agents in a sandbox instead such as bwrap anyways.
- chriswarbo 8mo ago
  > Why is it insecure, well, Pi tells you >No permission popups. Pi supports permission popups, but doesn't use them by default. Their example extensions show how to do it (add an event listener for `tool_call` events; to block the call put `block: true` in its result). > there's no secure way to know whether what they're asking to is what they'll actually do What do you mean? `tool_call` event listeners are given the parameters of the tool call; so e.g. a call to the `bash` tool will show the exact command that will execute (unless we block it, of course).
cermicelli 8mo ago
Just how expensive was that domain?
- jotaen 8mo ago
  README on Github says “pi.dev domain graciously donated by exe.dev” (though that doesn’t say anything about the original price of course).
  - schpet 8mo ago
    oh that's kind. i hope they keep the old domain up too though: https://shittycodingagent.ai/ https://shittycodingagent.ai/
    - squeefers 8mo ago
      looooooool
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
arjie 8mo ago
Has anyone used an open coding agent in headless mode? I have a system cobbled together with exceptions going to a centralized system where I can then have each one pulled out and `claude -p`'d but I'd rather just integrate an open coding agent into the loop because it's less janky and then I'll have it try to fix the problem and propose a PR for me to review. If anyone else has used pi.dev or opencode or aider in this mode (completely non-interactive until the PR) I'd be curious to hear. EDIT: Thank you to both responders. I'll just try the two options out then.
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  You probably want to look into pi then - it's extremely extensible.
- dosinga 8mo ago
  you can run https://block.github.io/goose/ https://block.github.io/goose/ in headless mode (I work on goose)
- evalstate 8mo ago
  fast-agent lets you do this as well (and has a skill in its default skills repo to help with automation/running in container/hf job).
- fred_tandemai 8mo ago
  Been using pi exactly for this and it's working great!
- chriswarbo 8mo ago
  pi has an RPC mode which just sends/receives JSON lines over stdio (including progress updates, and "UI" things like asking for confirmation, if it's configured for that). That's how the pi-coding-agent Emacs package interacts with pi; and it's how I write automated tests for my own pi extensions (along with a dummy LLM that emits canned responses).
- mihneadevries 8mo ago
  Aider's `--yes` flag combined with a git-based loop works honestly better than I expected for this, like it'll just commit and you review the diff. Pi I've tried headless and it's fine but you kinda have to wire up the exit conditions yourself since it's so minimal by design. Fwiw the janky `claude -p` approach you described is actually pretty solid once you stop fighting it, the simplicity is the feature I think.
jmorgan 8mo ago
I've been using Pi day to day recently for simple, smaller tasks. It's a great harness for use with smaller parameter size models given the system prompt is quite a bit shorter vs Claude or Codex (and it uses a nice small set of tools by default).
- rpastuszak 8mo ago
  Which models do you use and what for? I'm looking for ideas to play with.
  - jmorgan 8mo ago
    For local models I've been trying it with GLM-4.7-Flash and the new LFM2 24B model. I'm excited to try it with the new Qwen3.5 models that came out today as well.
- hrmtst93837 8mo ago
  [flagged]
rcarmo 8mo ago
My current fave harness. I've been using it to great effect, since it is self-extensible, and added support for it to https://github.com/rcarmo/vibes https://github.com/rcarmo/vibes because it is so much faster than ACP.
- badlogic 8mo ago
  wow, i love this! was about to build this myself, but this looks exactly what i want.
  - rcarmo 8mo ago
    The better web UI is now part of https://github.com/rcarmo/piclaw https://github.com/rcarmo/piclaw (which is essentially the same, but with more polish and a claw-like memory system). So you can pick if you want TS or Python as the back-end :)
    - badlogic 8mo ago
      if i ever want a claw, i'd obv. go with this :)
      - rcarmo 8mo ago
        The claw version’s web UI essentially has better thinking output, more visibility of tool calls, and slightly better SSE streaming. I’ve backported some of it to vibes, but if you want to borrow UI stuff, the better bits are in piclaw. I use both constantly on my phone/desktop.
- gusmally 8mo ago
  Which ones have you compared it against?
  - rcarmo 8mo ago
    Literally all of them: https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox
infruset 8mo ago
Note there is a fork oh-my-pi: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi of https://blog.can.ac/2026/02/12/the-harness-problem/ https://blog.can.ac/2026/02/12/the-harness-problem/ fame. I use it as a daily driver but I also love pi.
himata4113 8mo ago
Preconfigured PI: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi
- mijoharas 8mo ago
  I'd quite like the web tools from oh-my-pi, but able to be extracted to a normal pi tool or plugin... Maybe I should look into that sometime...
- virtuallynathan 8mo ago
  Big fan of this fork, been using it for everything for the last couple of weeks. Went from codex/claude code -> opencode -> pi -> oh-my-pi
- esafak 8mo ago
  Why not OpenCode?
  - jannniii 8mo ago
    Oh-my-bloat. I am still an avid user of opencode, my own fork though with async tools etc, but it is cumbersome and tries to do too many things.
    - tietjens 8mo ago
      very interesting, i tried it at the start but haven't come back. could you expand on what you mean?
- jannniii 8mo ago
  It is an awesome fork! Tried to contribute also, but community seems quite close knit.
- amin2 8mo ago
  This looks great but It feels really risky to add more and more tools to the harness from random repos. Nothing against this repo in particular but I wish we had better security and isolation so I that I knew nothing could go wrong and I could just test a bunch of these every day the same way I can install an app on my phone and feel confident it's not going to steal my data.
ge96 8mo ago
Is that an official term "coding harness" Wondering if you wanted a similar interface (though a GUI not just CLI) where it's not for coding what would you call that? Same idea cycle through models, ask question, drag-drop images, etc...
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  LLM harness has been in vogue for a year now…
  - outofpaper 8mo ago
    A harness is a collection of stubs and drivers configured to assist with automation or testing. It's a standard term often used in QA as they've been automating things for ages before Gen Ai came on to the scene.
    - arcanemachiner 8mo ago
      Yes, it is also a device used to control the movement of work animals, which farmers have been using for ages before QA came on to the scene.
    - squeefers 8mo ago
      its technically an IDE, but harness makes it sound new and fancy.
- arcanemachiner 8mo ago
  Yes. It seems to be the term that stands out the most, as terms like "AI coding assistant", "agentic coding framework", etc. are too vague to really differentiate these tools. "harness" fits pretty nicely IMO. It can be used as a single word, and it's not too semantically overloaded to be useful in this context.
- unshavedyak 8mo ago
  Honestly, i'm not interested in this if it can't use my subscription, but now i really want to understand this idea of coding harness. I've been exploring ideas that might be quite similar, though more inline with the scope of IDE, and it sounds like "coding harness" fits my mental model better.
prakashrj 8mo ago
[dead]
fred_tandemai 8mo ago
Anyone managed to run pi in a completely sandboxed environment? It can only access the cwd and subdirectories
- fjk 8mo ago
  I’ve been tinkering with Gondolin, a micro-vm agent sandbox. Here’s an example config: https://github.com/earendil-works/gondolin/blob/main/host/examples/pi-gondolin.ts https://github.com/earendil-works/gondolin/blob/main/host/ex...
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  I run mine inside https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox (with https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm)
- monkey26 8mo ago
  I do this with an extension. I run all bash tools with bwrap and ACLs for the write and edit tools. Serves my purposes. Opens up access to other required directories, at least for git and rust. I think I published it. Check the pi package page.
- ac29 8mo ago
  Yeah I wrote a small landlock wrapper using go-landlock to sandbox pi that works well (not public, similar projects are landrun and nono). Note that if you sandbox to literally just the working directly, pi itself wont run since pretty much every linux application needs to be able to read from /usr and /etc
- jxonas 8mo ago
  [dead]
- carderne 8mo ago
  I got pi to write me a very basic sandbox based on an example from the pi github. Added hooks for read/write/edit/bash, some prompts to temp/perm override. Have a look, copy-paste what you like. https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
ramoz 8mo ago
The way you’re able to extend the harness through extension/hook architecture is really cool. Eg some form of comprehensive planning/spec workflow is best modeled as an extension vs natively built in. And the extension still ends up feeling “native” in use
mongrelion 8mo ago
Pi ships with powerful defaults but skips features like sub-agents and plan mode Does anyone have an idea as to why this would be a feature? don't you want to have a discussion with your agent to iron out the details before moving onto the implementation (build) phase? In any case, looks cool :) EDIT 1: Formatting EDIT 2: Thanks everyone for your input. I was not aware of the extensibility model that pi had in mind or that you can also iterate your plan on a PLAN.md file. Very interesting approach. I'll have a look and give it a go.
- ramoz 8mo ago
  See my comment in the thread but there is an intuitive extension architecture that makes integrating these type of things feel native. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/coding-agent#extensions https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/codin...
- alvivar 8mo ago
  I plan all the time. I just tell Pi to create a Plan.md file, and we iterate on it until we are ready to implement.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
    Agreed. I rarely find the guardrails of plan to be necessary; I basically never use it on opencode. I have some custom commands I use to ask for plan making, discussion. As for subagents, Pi has sessions. And it has a full session tree & forking. This is one of my favorite things, in all harnesses: build the thing with half the context, then keep using that as a checkpoint, doing new work, from that same branch point. It means still having a very usable lengthy context window but having good fundamental project knowledge loaded.
    - deleted 8mo ago
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mccoyb 8mo ago
Pi has made all the right design choices. Shout out to Mario (and Armin the OG stan) — great taste shows itself.
- semiinfinitely 8mo ago
  I do not understand why in the age of ai coding we would implement this in javascript
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Blackarea 8mo ago
    yes! I just don't understand that as well. Up until some time ago claud code's preferred install was a npm i, wasn't it? Please serious answers for why anyone would use a web language for a terminal app
    - fragmede 8mo ago
      Because it's what the person writing it's preferred language. So it can share code with the web app. Because writing it in javascript is easier than writing it in raw brute forced assembly.
  - mccoyb 8mo ago
    It’s straightforward: JavaScript is a dynamic language, which allows code (for instance, code implementing an extension to the harness) to be executed and loaded while the harness is running. This is quite nice — I do think there’s a version of pi’s design choices which could live in a static harness, but fully covering the same capabilities as pi without a dynamic language would be difficult. (You could imagine specifying a programmable UI, etc — various ways to extend the behavior of the system, and you’d like end up with an interpreter in the harness) At least, you’d like to have a way to hot reload code (Elixir / Erlang could be interesting) This is my intuition, at least.
    - 8mo ago
rahimnathwani 8mo ago
Hugging Face now provides instructions for using local models in Pi: https://x.com/victormustar/status/2026380984866710002 https://x.com/victormustar/status/2026380984866710002
lukasb 8mo ago
But I can't use my Codex plan with it, right? I have to use an API key?
- mccoyb 8mo ago
  You can use your Codex plan with it. OpenAI endorsed it several weeks ago, as far as I remember. That could change, however, but now seems safe.
  - ac29 8mo ago
    You can use your Claude or Gemini plan with it too for now, though Anthropic and Google have made it clear this is a ToS violation.
- theshrike79 8mo ago
  Pi makes GPT-5.3-Codex act about on par with Claude easily. There's something in the default Codex harness that makes it fight with both arms behind its back, maybe the sandboxing is overly paranoid or something. With Pi I can one-shot many features faster and more accurately than with Codex-cli.
agentwyz 8mo ago
[flagged]
suralind 8mo ago
I’ve been testing it for a few days on pretty much clean install (no customizations/extensions) and it’s ok. Not sure if I like it yet.
muratsu 8mo ago
I’m working with a friend to build an ui around Pi to make it more user friendly for people who prefer to work with a gui (ala conductor). You can check out the repo: https://github.com/philipp-spiess/modern https://github.com/philipp-spiess/modern
- ramoz 8mo ago
  In the same spirit, I also ported a planning UI extension for Pi. https://plannotator.ai/blog/plannotator-meets-pi/ https://plannotator.ai/blog/plannotator-meets-pi/
elyase 8mo ago
there is also pz a drop-in replacement for pi rewritten in Zig. 1.7MB static binary, 3ms startup, 1.4MB RAM idle. Find more at: https://github.com/elyase/awesome-personal-ai-assistants?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/elyase/awesome-personal-ai-assistants?tab...
- _neil 8mo ago
  Direct link to pz for those on mobile: https://github.com/joelreymont/pz https://github.com/joelreymont/pz
- snthpy 8mo ago
  Cool, thanks for this. What about the extensions though? For me the point about pi is minimal base plus configurable extensions you choose.
- mccoyb 8mo ago
  Written by a person who is infamously annoying open source maintainers with AI slop PRs (see the DWARF debacle in OCaml) … and missing much of pi’s philosophy Pass for me.
tmustier 8mo ago
I haven’t met a single person who has tried pi for a few days and not made it their daily driver. Once you taste the freedom of being able to set up your tool exactly how you like, there’s really no going back. and you can build cool stuff on top of it too!
- ck_one 8mo ago
  What self-built capabilities do you like the most that claude code doesn't offer?
  - tomashubelbauer 8mo ago
    Not the person you replied to, but I'll stress the point that it is not just what you can add that Claude Code doesn't offer, but also what you don't need to add that Claude Code does offer that you don't want. I dislike many things about Claude Code, but I'll pick subagents as one example. Don't want to use them? Tough luck. (AFAIK, it's been a while since I used CC, maybe it is configurable now or was always and I never discovered that.) With Pi, I just didn't install an extension for that, which I suspect exists, but I have a choice of never finding out.
    - prettyblocks 8mo ago
      You can just put "Never use subagents" in your CLAUDE.md and it will honor it, no?
      - tomashubelbauer 8mo ago
        IME CLAUDE.md rarely gets fully honored. I've left HN comments before about how I had to convert some CLAUDE.md instructions to pre-commit deterministic checks due to how often they were ignored. My guesstimate is that it is about 70 % reliable. That's with Opus 4.5. I've since switched to GPT-5.2 and now GPT-5.3 Codex and use Codex CLI, Pi and OpenCode, not CC, so maybe things have changed with a new system prompt or with the introduction of Opus 4.6.
    - 8mo ago
thevinter 8mo ago
Pi was probably the best ad for Claude Code I ever saw. After my max sub expired I decided to try Kimi on a more open harness, and it ended up being one of the worst (and eye opening experiences) I had with the agentic world so far. It was completely alienating and so much 'not for me', that afterwards I went back and immediately renewed my claude sub. https://www.thevinter.com/blog/bad-vibes-from-pi https://www.thevinter.com/blog/bad-vibes-from-pi
- mccoyb 8mo ago
  > I would say that the project actively expects you to be downloading them to fill any missing gaps you might have. Where did you get this perspective from? > I thought pi and its tools were supposed to be minimal and extensible. So why is a subagent extension bundling six agents I never asked for that I can’t disable or remove? Why do you think a random subagents extension is under the same philosophy as pi? Your blog post says little about pi proper, it's essentially concerned with issues you had with the ecosystem of extensions, often made by random people who either do or do not get the philosophy? Why would that be up to pi to enforce?
  - the_mitsuhiko 8mo ago
    Sharing extensions is very much the philosophy. Using them however is less so. Pi ships with docs that include extensions and the agent looks there for inspiration if you ask it to build a custom extension. Looking at what others publish is useful!
- NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago
  hypegrift
- CGamesPlay 8mo ago
  > if I start the agent in ./folder then anything outside of ./folder should be off limits unless I explicitly allow it, and the same goes for bash where everything not on an allowlist should be blocked by default. Here's the problem with Claude Code: it acts like it's got security, but it's the equivalent of a "do not walk on grass" sign. There's no technical restrictions at play, and the agent can (maliciously or accidentally) bypass the "restrictions". That's why Pi doesn't have restrictions by default. The logic is: no matter what agent you are using, you should be using it in a real sandbox (container, VM, whatever).
isagawa-co 8mo ago
Interesting approach to planning via extensions. I took a similar direction with enforcement. A governance loop that hooks into the agent's tool calls and blocks execution until protocol is followed. Every 10 actions (configurable), the agent re-centers. No permission popups, but the agent literally can't skip steps. Open source: https://github.com/isagawa-co/isagawa-kernel https://github.com/isagawa-co/isagawa-kernel
chriswarbo 8mo ago
I've been using pi via the pi-coding-agent Emacs package, which uses its RPC mode to populate a pair of Markdown buffers (one for input, one for chat), which I find much nicer than the awful TUIs used by harnesses like gemini-cli (Emacs works perfectly well as a TUI too!). The extensibility is really nice. It was easy to get it using my preferred issue tracker; and I've recently overridden the built-in `read` and `write` commands to use Emacs buffers instead. I'd like to override `edit` next, but haven't figured out an approach that would play to the strengths of LLMs (i.e. not matching exact text) and Emacs (maybe using tree-sitter queries for matches?). I also gave it a general-purpose `emacs_eval`, which it has used to browse documentation with EWW.
- dnouri 8mo ago
  Nice! I'm curious to hear how you're mapping `read` and `write` to Emacs buffers. Does that mean those commands open those files in Emacs and read and write them there? Let me also drop a link to the Pi Emacs mode here for anyone who wants to check it out: https://github.com/dnouri/pi-coding-agent https://github.com/dnouri/pi-coding-agent -- or use: M-x package-install pi-coding-agent We've been building some fun integrations in there like having RET on the output of `read`, `write`, `edit` tool calls open the corresponding file and location at point in an Emacs buffer. Parity with Pi's fantastic session and tree browsing is hopefully landing soon, too. Also: Magit :-)
  - chriswarbo 8mo ago
    I've pushed the extension to GitHub at https://github.com/Warbo/pi-extensions/tree/master/extensions/emacsclient https://github.com/Warbo/pi-extensions/tree/master/extension... The implementation is pretty terrible: a giant string of vibe-coded Emacs Lisp is sent to emacsclient, which performs the actions and sends back a string of JSON. It's been interesting to iterate on the approach: watching the LLM (in my case Claude) attempting to use the tools; noticing when it struggles or makes incorrect assumptions; and updating the tool, documentation and defaults to better match those expectations. I've also written some Emacs Lisp which opens Pi and tells it to "Action the request/issue/problem at point in buffer '<current-buffer>'" https://github.com/Warbo/warbo-emacs-d/blob/a13a1e02f5203476d475dc7deb8f18be632f93c0/personal/warbo-llm.el#L81 https://github.com/Warbo/warbo-emacs-d/blob/a13a1e02f5203476... It feels similar to the file-watching provided by Aider (which uses inotify to spot files containing `# AI!` or `# AI?`), which I've previously used with FIXME and TODO comments in code; but it also works well in non-file things, e.g. error messages and test failures in `shell-mode`, and issues listed in the Emacs UI I wrote for the Artemis bug tracker (Claude just gets the issue number from the current line, and plugs that into a Pi extension I made for Artemis :-) )
type4 8mo ago
What are people using to cost efficiently use this? I was using a Google Ultra sub which gave enough but that’s gone now. ChatGPT $20/month is alright but I got locked out for a day after a couple hours. Considering the GitHub pro plus plan.
- beacon294 8mo ago
  FWIW the lockout probably wasn't related... maybe the content you were working on or your context window management somehow triggered something?
- lambda 8mo ago
  Qwen3 Coder Next in llama.cpp on my own machine. I'm an AI hater, but I need to experiment with it occasionally, I'm not going to pay someone rent for something they trained on my own GitHub, Stack overflow, and Reddit posts.
- rahimnathwani 8mo ago
  You could try minimax 2.5 via openrouter.
  - ursuscamp 8mo ago
    MiniMax has an incredibly affordable coding plan for $10/month. It has a rolling five hour limit of 100 prompts. 100 prompts doesn't sound like much, but in typical AI company accounting fashion, 1 prompt is not really 1 prompt. I have yet to come even close to hitting the limit with heavy use.
- UncleOxidant 8mo ago
  Run Qwen3-coder-next locally. That's what I'm doing (using LMstudio). It's actually a surprisingly capable model. I've had it working on some LLVM-IR manipulation and microcode generation for a kind of VLIW custom processor. I've been pleasantly surprised that it can handle this (LLVM is not easy) - there are also verilog code that define the processor's behavior that it reads to determine the microcode format and expected processor behavior. When I do hit something that it seems to struggle with I can go over to antigravity and get some free Gemini 3 flash usage.
indigodaddy 8mo ago
too bad I cannot star this.. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/coding-agent https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/codin...
gtirloni 8mo ago
What's a coding harness? Claude Code is a "harness" and not a TUI?
- ErikBjare 8mo ago
  If you run Claude Code with `-p --output-format json` it's no longer a TUI, but it's still a harness.
- jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
  The fact that it's a tui isn't particularly relevant. It could be a gui or cli and provide very similar value. Nearly all of its value is facilitating your interaction with the LLM, the tools it can use, and how it uses them.
  - gtirloni 8mo ago
    We used to call these "libraries".
    - jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
      Harness is an appropriate name. It comes from reinforcement learning world where you need to build the proper scaffolding for it to optimize for the goal you want it to. This is very similar to what the agent is doing. You are building the appropriate environment for it to be able to complete the task most reliably etc Not just functions/tools and documentation available (which is similar to a library), also context and critically, enforcement of behavior. This is probably the key thing that makes it a "harness". If the agent can do whatever it wants, it's not in a harness.
qazplm17 8mo ago
Pi treats you like an adult and shows whatever the fuck LLM is doing rather than actively hiding shit from the user. And just for that, once you tasted the freedom and transparency, there’s no way to go back to CC.
- TZubiri 8mo ago
  I think OpenCode is the same. They are all open source though so you can just find out whats going on if you want right?
- WXLCKNO 8mo ago
  After 2.20.0 of Claude code where they started not showing what files are read / searches are made by default .. I fucking love how easy it was to ditch Claude code for pi.
moonlion_eth 8mo ago
ive been using pi for about a week as daily driver and so far im happy with it. I really like the modular concept and also that its rather minimal
mobrienv 8mo ago
Another batteries included pi setup. Built a lightweight mobile webui to run it on termux and code on my phone. https://github.com/mikeyobrien/rho https://github.com/mikeyobrien/rho
rglover 8mo ago
Excited to give this a try, looks really well done.
TZubiri 8mo ago
Wtf is that example gif? The prompt shown is "Who's your daddy and what does he do?" Is this a joke or tech? Is the author a dev or a clown?
- NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago
  No one cares about your opinions. This coding agent certainly couldn't give a fuck.
- enneff 8mo ago
  It’s a quote from the movie Kindergarten Cop.
fnord77 8mo ago
I mean using the captive agents is much cheaper than supplying your api key to a 3rd party agent.
CGamesPlay 8mo ago
To me, the most interesting thing about Pi and the "claw" phenomenon is what it means for open source. It's becoming passé to ask for feature requests and even to submit PRs to open source repos. Instead of extensions you install, you download a skill file that tells a coding agent how to add a feature. The software stops being an artifact and starts being a living tool that isn't the same as anyone else's copy. I'm curious to see what tooling will emerge for collaborating with this new paradigm.
- axelthegerman 8mo ago
  And how great it will be to troubleshoot any issues because everyone is basically running a distinct piece of software
  - sshine 8mo ago
    ... made minutes ago.
    - krickelkrackel 8mo ago
      So everybody will be using (sometimes slightly, sometimes entirely) different software. Like mutations, these adapt to the specific problems in the situation they were prompted to be programmed.
  - wrxd 8mo ago
    I don’t want to be the one who has to upgrade this software + vibe coded patches. It’s going to be very likely that once something is patched is to be considered as diverged and very hard to upgrade
  - theshrike79 8mo ago
    It's like the dude who monkey-patches their car and goes to the dealer to complain why the suspension is stiff. It's because you put 2by4's in place of the shocks, you absolute muppet. And then they either give them a massive bill to fix it properly or politely show them out. Same will happen in self-modifying software. Some people are self-aware enough to know that "I made this, it's my problem to fix", some will complain to the maker of the harness they used and will be summarily shown the door.
20022026 8mo ago
Anyone tried pi with 5.3-codex vs codex cli?
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  I run it almost exclusively with codex models. Zero issues.
TacticalCoder 8mo ago
Naming skills though...
ianlpaterson 8mo ago
Coming from OpenClaw, it's pretty amazing how fast pi is, particularly paired with Qwen3 that dropped today. It's a magical time.
- kristianpaul 8mo ago
  Indeed, it seems to just works with a self hosted Qwen3 coder next.
  - ianlpaterson 8mo ago
    yes!
- jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
  What dropped today? Wasn't Qwen3 Coder Next released beginning of the month? Qwen3.5 released a couple of days ago but I'm not that RAM rich
  - breisa 8mo ago
    Alibaba released a whole set of new Qwen 3.5 models including a ~120B and a ~35B MoE.
    - jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
      Nice. 27B looks reasonable too.
      - ianlpaterson 8mo ago
        First impressions of Qwen3.5 35b are that it's amazing
        jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
        Amazing compared to local models or? How would you compare it to, say, Sonnet 4.5 and Qwen3 Coder Next? I'm guessing it's fast due to 3B experts
buremba 8mo ago
I spent 3 months adopting Codex and Claude Code SDKs only to realize they're just vendor lock-in and brittle. They're intended to be used as CLI so it's not programmable enough as a library. After digging into OpenClaw codebase, I can safely say that the most of its success comes from the underlying harness, pi agent. pi plugins support adding hooks at every stage, from tool calls to compaction and let you customize the TUI UI as well. I use it for my multi-tenant Openclaw alternative https://github.com/lobu-ai/lobu https://github.com/lobu-ai/lobu If you're building an agent, please don't use proprietary SDKs from model providers. Just stick to ai-sdk or pi agent.
- burgerquizz 8mo ago
  how do you replicate the claude code system prompts in pi? i have tried using claude agebt sdk without the claude code preset, and it is quite bad
  - Munksgaard 8mo ago
    Pretty easy, the prompts can be seen here[0] and pi supports setting SYSTEM.md. 0: https://cchistory.mariozechner.at/ https://cchistory.mariozechner.at/
    - Majromax 8mo ago
      For all of the recent talk about how Anthropic relies on heavy cache optimization for claude-code, it certainly seems like session-specific information (the exact datestamp, the pid-specific temporary directory for memory storage) enters awfully early in the system prompt.
- siva7 8mo ago
  I also wondered for months why it feels so difficult to use Openai or Anthropic SDKs until i came to a similar conclusion.
- bjackman 8mo ago
  IIUC to reliably use 3P tools you need to use API billing, right? Based on my limited experimentation this is an order of magnitude more expensive than consumer subscriptions like Claude Pro, do I have that right? ("Limited experimentation" = a few months ago I threw $10 into the Anthropic console and did a bit of vibe coding and found my $10 disappeared within a couple of hours). If so, that would support your concern, it does kinda sound like they're selling marginal Claude Code / Gemini CLI tokens at a loss. Which definitely smells like an aggressive lockin strategy.
reacharavindh 8mo ago
I began with pi, and have been using oh-my-pi the last two weeks. https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi More of a batteries included version of pi.
- self_awareness 8mo ago
  Are you running it in some kind of sandbox? Does it have sandboxing features?
  - reacharavindh 8mo ago
    I dont. I use this as my coding harness (replacement of gemini-cli/claudecode etc). I dont want to sandbox it because I expect it to be used only for coding on projects. I dont want to over complicate it. I am building my own assistant as an AI harness - that is definitely getting sandboxed to run only as a VM on my Mac.
  - neop1x 8mo ago
    I use a sandbox example extension with comes with Pi, it uses the anthropic sandbox runtime (bubblewrap on linux). The runtime has one bug and needs one improvement (I've made PRs, no response yet). Pi's sandbox example extension does not block internal tools (read/write) according to rules, I've created a PR but can't submit because of Pi's OSS vacation BS... https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/compare/main...k3a:pi-mono:sandbox-tool-patterns https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/compare/main...k3a:pi-mo... I am quite happy with my patched forks for now
    - self_awareness 8mo ago
      I just told PI to generate itself a permissioned_* equivalents of read,write,bash,edit. Now, permissioned_read,permissioned_write,permissioned_edit have full access to anything from current dir and deeper, and permissioned_bash is always permission-gated. Default read,edit,write,bash are disabled. It seems to work really good. Generally, I'm in awe. I think I've already changed the way I work.
- 8mo ago
thepasch 8mo ago
Stop advertising pi, people. It _somehow_ continued to fly somewhat under the radar after that whole OpenClaw nonsense. Don’t make Anthropic’s sic their bloodhounds on them like they did on OpenCode.
- tietjens 8mo ago
  pi is an officially accepted harness of either Anthropic or OpenAI. I forgot which.
- raincole 8mo ago
  Interestingly, since OpenClaw, there has been ~one post about Pi every week. But practically no one voted any of them except this one.
- kristianpaul 8mo ago
  People deserve to know it exists, I got tired of even OpenCode workflows/agents, installed OpenSpec but all this wrapped todos still not how i wanted I needed more control but dint wanted to write my own tool, then i ended knowing about pi, this got me interested at first read: No plan mode. Write plans to files, or build it with extensions, or install a package. No built-in to-dos. Use a TODO.md file, or build your own with extensions. No background bash. Use tmux. Full observability, direct interaction. This is very important to have control and ownership. Pi is not for everyone, but the ones eventually want to have tools like (read, bash, edit, write, grep, find, ls) as building blocks.
mr_o47 8mo ago
I recently discovered this via a YouTube video a few days ago I really like the customization aspect of it and you can build tools on fly and even switch model mid session There’s another project here called oh my pi has anyone here tried it
raffkede 8mo ago
it even runs inside a browser I'll publish my browserpi if someone is interested I did not dare to add a pull request with my slop but i would love to show the fork and create a pull request if there is broader interest
- vinibrito 8mo ago
  No need to push to normal repo, just publish your fork, I'd like to see it
sheerun 8mo ago
This domain must have costed $$$$
- thomascountz 8mo ago
  pi.dev domain graciously donated by exe.dev Notwithstanding the donation, this domain must have costed $$$$
solarkraft 8mo ago
I happen to be somewhat familiar with OpenCode and am considering using it as a personal AI workspace (some chat & agentic behavior, not worrying about initiative behavior just yet, I’d try to DIY memory with local files and access to my notes) because it seems to have a decent ecosystem. Pi appears to have a smaller, less “pre-made” ecosystem, but with more flexibility, enthusiasm and extensibility. Is this correct? Should I look towards Pi over OpenCode? What are the UI options?
- amunozo 8mo ago
  I have the same question as you, but I want to add that I used OpenCode for general tasks like writing, organization and such but with a context of .md files and it works wonders. And like you, I am considering trying a better suited harness for this task.
  - solarkraft 8mo ago
    What issues are you facing with OpenCode? I looked a bit into the reasoning for Pi’s design (https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/#toc_13 https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/#to...) and, while it does seem to do a lot of things very well around extensibility, I do miss support for permissions, MCP and perhaps Todos and a server mode. OpenCode seems a lot more complete in that regard, but I can well imagine that people have adapted Pi for these use cases (OpenClaw seems to have all of these). So it’s definitely not out of the race yet, but I still appreciate OpenCodes relative seeming completeness in comparison.
    - miroljub 8mo ago
      > while it does seem to do a lot of things very well around extensibility, https://pi.dev/packages https://pi.dev/packages > I do miss support for permissions, As soon as your agent can write and execute code, your permissions are just a security theater. If you care, just do proper sandboxing. If not, there are extensions for that. > MCP Again, Pi is extensible. pi install pi-mcp-adapter Now, you can connect to any mcp. > and perhaps Todos At least 10 different todo extensions. Pick which one you like. If you don't like any of them, ask Pi to write one for you. > and a server mode. Pi has rpc mode, which is a kind of server. If that's not enough, you could extend it. > OpenCode seems a lot more complete in that regard, Yes, but good luck working with Opencode if you don't like their plan-mode. Or todo support. And MCP. You pay their cost in complexity and tokens even if you don't use them or you don't like how they work. > but I can well imagine that people have adapted Pi for these use cases (OpenClaw seems to have all of these). So it’s definitely not out of the race yet, but I still appreciate OpenCodes relative seeming completeness in comparison. There's also an oh-my-pi fork if you want an out-of-the-box experience. Still, in my experience, nothing beats Pi in terms of customizability. It's the first piece of software that I can easily make completely to my liking. And I say that as a decade old Emacs user.
carderne 8mo ago
The people pushing oh-my-pi seem to have missed the point of pi... Downloading 200k+ lines of additional code seems completely against the philosophy of building up your harness, letting your agent self-improve, relying on code that you control. If you want bags of features, rather clone oh-my-pi somewhere, and get your agent to bring in bits of it a time, checking, reviewing, customising as you go.
- manojlds 8mo ago
  Yeah ohmypi is garbage. The point is you have a thing shell and add your own on top by just talking to pi itself or pick in selective extensions.
_pdp_ 8mo ago
I still don't get why would you want to use a terminal app to code when you can do all of this through IDE extension which does the same except it is better integrated. You can open a grid of windows inside vscode too and it comes back up exactly as it was on reload.
- theshrike79 8mo ago
  When I use a CLI agent to code, I don't need the IDE for anything. Think of it more like directing a coworker or subcontractor via text chat. You tell them what you want and get a result, then you test it if it's what you want and give more instructions if needed. I literally just fixed a maintenance program on my own server while working my $dayjob. ssh to server, start up claude and tell it what's wrong, tab away. Then I came back some time later, read what it had done, tested the script and immediately got a few improvement ideas. Gave them to Claude, tabbed out, etc. Took me maybe 15 minutes of active work while chatting on Slack and managing my other tasks. I never needed to look at the code at any point. If it works and tests pass, why do I care what it looks like?
  - _pdp_ 8mo ago
    I suppose we are working on different problems. In my own experience I cannot blindly accept code without even looking at it even for a few moments because I've had many situations where the code was simply doing the wrong things... including tests are completely wrong and testing the wrong assumptions. So yah, even when I review trivial changes I still look at the diff view to see if it makes sense. And IDEs make code review a lot easier than diff. Btw, this experience is not from lack of trying. We use coding agent extensively (I would assume more than the typical org looking at our bill) and while they are certainly very, very helpful and I cannot describe how much effort they are really saving us, there is absolutely zero chance of pushing something out without reviewing it first - same applies for code written by AI agent or a coworker.
- chriswarbo 8mo ago
  > I still don't get why would you want to use a terminal app to code when you can do all of this through IDE extension which does the same except it is better integrated. I agree. I tried Gemini CLI for a while, and didn't like how separate I felt from the underlying files: rather than doing minor cleanup myself, the activation energy of switching to a separate editor and opening the same files was too high, so I'd prompt the LLM to it instead. Which was often an exercise in frustration, as it would take many rounds of explanation for such tiny payoffs; maybe even fiddling with system prompts and markdown files, to try and avoid wasting so much time in the future... I've been using Pi for a few weeks now, and have managed to integrate it quite deeply into Emacs. I run it entirely via RPC mode (JSON over stdio), so I don't really know (or care) about its terminal UI :-)
alabhyajindal 8mo ago
I am also going to now implement an existing project and invent a different name for it. Look out for Waterfox, a minimal web consumer.
bankombinator 8mo ago
Mario mentioned in hackernews.
squeefers 8mo ago
minimal indeed. why are we regressing back to terminals now? ive seen this in the rust world mainly
- jacobgorm 8mo ago
  Some of us never left the terminal. Welcome to the future.
- chriswarbo 8mo ago
  Doesn't need a terminal: run it in RPC mode to send/receive JSON over stdio. That's how the pi-coding-agent Emacs package works, which is the only way I've ever used Pi. It seems pretty well done: when I added permission requests to the `bash` tool, the "Are you sure y/N" requests started appearing just like they were native to Emacs.
nacozarina 8mo ago
too many things named ‘pi’, kmn
- Veen 8mo ago
  Its original name was more distinctive but less "enterprise friendly". https://shittycodingagent.ai https://shittycodingagent.ai
  - chid 8mo ago
    interestingly that's what comes up when you search for pi-coding-agent rather than the new domain.
twsted 8mo ago
I do not understand some of the comments here: openclaw uses pi. It seems stange also that even Steinberger in his interviews is not giving pi the proper attribution.
Vegenoid 8mo ago
What models are you all using with Pi? How much are you paying on monthly or weekly basis for your usage? I'm very interested in it, but my budget is constrained and the usage granted by a $20/month Claude plan seems much more affordable than when I've tried API-based access with other agents. Unfortunately, this locks me in to Claude Code.
- neop1x 8mo ago
  Use OpenRouter, lots of great open-weights models like MiniMax, Kimi K2, Mistral, Qwen, ...
  - nebben64 8mo ago
    so are people pairing OpenRouter with open agent harnesses like Pi or OpenCode?
- kristianpaul 8mo ago
  Qwen3 coder next works very well. I started with 20usd/month ollama cloud and switch to 200usd then decided host my own llm with a gigabyte ai atop since now i'm using llms agents everywhere on my home lab
NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago
100% this is where OpenCode missed the boat. PI is what it looks like when you treat your Plugin sdk as the golden path

608 points by kristianpaul 8mo ago

The backing to OpenClaw/MoltBot whatever they're calling themselves. Why is it insecure, well, Pi tells you >No permission popups. Anyway, even if you give your agent permission, there's no secure way to know whether what they're asking to is what they'll actually do, etc.

himata4113 8mo ago
you want to put agents in a sandbox instead such as bwrap anyways.
chriswarbo 8mo ago
> Why is it insecure, well, Pi tells you >No permission popups. Pi supports permission popups, but doesn't use them by default. Their example extensions show how to do it (add an event listener for `tool_call` events; to block the call put `block: true` in its result). > there's no secure way to know whether what they're asking to is what they'll actually do What do you mean? `tool_call` event listeners are given the parameters of the tool call; so e.g. a call to the `bash` tool will show the exact command that will execute (unless we block it, of course).

cermicelli 8mo ago

Just how expensive was that domain?

jotaen 8mo ago
README on Github says “pi.dev domain graciously donated by exe.dev” (though that doesn’t say anything about the original price of course).
- schpet 8mo ago
  oh that's kind. i hope they keep the old domain up too though: https://shittycodingagent.ai/ https://shittycodingagent.ai/
  - squeefers 8mo ago
    looooooool
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

arjie 8mo ago

Has anyone used an open coding agent in headless mode? I have a system cobbled together with exceptions going to a centralized system where I can then have each one pulled out and `claude -p`'d but I'd rather just integrate an open coding agent into the loop because it's less janky and then I'll have it try to fix the problem and propose a PR for me to review. If anyone else has used pi.dev or opencode or aider in this mode (completely non-interactive until the PR) I'd be curious to hear. EDIT: Thank you to both responders. I'll just try the two options out then.

rcarmo 8mo ago
You probably want to look into pi then - it's extremely extensible.
dosinga 8mo ago
you can run https://block.github.io/goose/ https://block.github.io/goose/ in headless mode (I work on goose)
evalstate 8mo ago
fast-agent lets you do this as well (and has a skill in its default skills repo to help with automation/running in container/hf job).
fred_tandemai 8mo ago
Been using pi exactly for this and it's working great!
chriswarbo 8mo ago
pi has an RPC mode which just sends/receives JSON lines over stdio (including progress updates, and "UI" things like asking for confirmation, if it's configured for that). That's how the pi-coding-agent Emacs package interacts with pi; and it's how I write automated tests for my own pi extensions (along with a dummy LLM that emits canned responses).
mihneadevries 8mo ago
Aider's `--yes` flag combined with a git-based loop works honestly better than I expected for this, like it'll just commit and you review the diff. Pi I've tried headless and it's fine but you kinda have to wire up the exit conditions yourself since it's so minimal by design. Fwiw the janky `claude -p` approach you described is actually pretty solid once you stop fighting it, the simplicity is the feature I think.

jmorgan 8mo ago

I've been using Pi day to day recently for simple, smaller tasks. It's a great harness for use with smaller parameter size models given the system prompt is quite a bit shorter vs Claude or Codex (and it uses a nice small set of tools by default).

rpastuszak 8mo ago
Which models do you use and what for? I'm looking for ideas to play with.
- jmorgan 8mo ago
  For local models I've been trying it with GLM-4.7-Flash and the new LFM2 24B model. I'm excited to try it with the new Qwen3.5 models that came out today as well.
hrmtst93837 8mo ago
[flagged]

rcarmo 8mo ago

My current fave harness. I've been using it to great effect, since it is self-extensible, and added support for it to https://github.com/rcarmo/vibes https://github.com/rcarmo/vibes because it is so much faster than ACP.

badlogic 8mo ago
wow, i love this! was about to build this myself, but this looks exactly what i want.
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  The better web UI is now part of https://github.com/rcarmo/piclaw https://github.com/rcarmo/piclaw (which is essentially the same, but with more polish and a claw-like memory system). So you can pick if you want TS or Python as the back-end :)
  - badlogic 8mo ago
    if i ever want a claw, i'd obv. go with this :)
    - rcarmo 8mo ago
      The claw version’s web UI essentially has better thinking output, more visibility of tool calls, and slightly better SSE streaming. I’ve backported some of it to vibes, but if you want to borrow UI stuff, the better bits are in piclaw. I use both constantly on my phone/desktop.
gusmally 8mo ago
Which ones have you compared it against?
- rcarmo 8mo ago
  Literally all of them: https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox

infruset 8mo ago

Note there is a fork oh-my-pi: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi of https://blog.can.ac/2026/02/12/the-harness-problem/ https://blog.can.ac/2026/02/12/the-harness-problem/ fame. I use it as a daily driver but I also love pi.

himata4113 8mo ago

Preconfigured PI: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi

mijoharas 8mo ago
I'd quite like the web tools from oh-my-pi, but able to be extracted to a normal pi tool or plugin... Maybe I should look into that sometime...
virtuallynathan 8mo ago
Big fan of this fork, been using it for everything for the last couple of weeks. Went from codex/claude code -> opencode -> pi -> oh-my-pi
esafak 8mo ago
Why not OpenCode?
- jannniii 8mo ago
  Oh-my-bloat. I am still an avid user of opencode, my own fork though with async tools etc, but it is cumbersome and tries to do too many things.
  - tietjens 8mo ago
    very interesting, i tried it at the start but haven't come back. could you expand on what you mean?
jannniii 8mo ago
It is an awesome fork! Tried to contribute also, but community seems quite close knit.
amin2 8mo ago
This looks great but It feels really risky to add more and more tools to the harness from random repos. Nothing against this repo in particular but I wish we had better security and isolation so I that I knew nothing could go wrong and I could just test a bunch of these every day the same way I can install an app on my phone and feel confident it's not going to steal my data.

ge96 8mo ago

Is that an official term "coding harness" Wondering if you wanted a similar interface (though a GUI not just CLI) where it's not for coding what would you call that? Same idea cycle through models, ask question, drag-drop images, etc...

rcarmo 8mo ago
LLM harness has been in vogue for a year now…
- outofpaper 8mo ago
  A harness is a collection of stubs and drivers configured to assist with automation or testing. It's a standard term often used in QA as they've been automating things for ages before Gen Ai came on to the scene.
  - arcanemachiner 8mo ago
    Yes, it is also a device used to control the movement of work animals, which farmers have been using for ages before QA came on to the scene.
  - squeefers 8mo ago
    its technically an IDE, but harness makes it sound new and fancy.
arcanemachiner 8mo ago
Yes. It seems to be the term that stands out the most, as terms like "AI coding assistant", "agentic coding framework", etc. are too vague to really differentiate these tools. "harness" fits pretty nicely IMO. It can be used as a single word, and it's not too semantically overloaded to be useful in this context.
unshavedyak 8mo ago
Honestly, i'm not interested in this if it can't use my subscription, but now i really want to understand this idea of coding harness. I've been exploring ideas that might be quite similar, though more inline with the scope of IDE, and it sounds like "coding harness" fits my mental model better.

prakashrj 8mo ago

[dead]

fred_tandemai 8mo ago

Anyone managed to run pi in a completely sandboxed environment? It can only access the cwd and subdirectories

fjk 8mo ago
I’ve been tinkering with Gondolin, a micro-vm agent sandbox. Here’s an example config: https://github.com/earendil-works/gondolin/blob/main/host/examples/pi-gondolin.ts https://github.com/earendil-works/gondolin/blob/main/host/ex...
rcarmo 8mo ago
I run mine inside https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox https://github.com/rcarmo/agentbox (with https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm)
monkey26 8mo ago
I do this with an extension. I run all bash tools with bwrap and ACLs for the write and edit tools. Serves my purposes. Opens up access to other required directories, at least for git and rust. I think I published it. Check the pi package page.
ac29 8mo ago
Yeah I wrote a small landlock wrapper using go-landlock to sandbox pi that works well (not public, similar projects are landrun and nono). Note that if you sandbox to literally just the working directly, pi itself wont run since pretty much every linux application needs to be able to read from /usr and /etc
jxonas 8mo ago
[dead]
carderne 8mo ago
I got pi to write me a very basic sandbox based on an example from the pi github. Added hooks for read/write/edit/bash, some prompts to temp/perm override. Have a look, copy-paste what you like. https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox https://github.com/carderne/pi-sandbox

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

ramoz 8mo ago

The way you’re able to extend the harness through extension/hook architecture is really cool. Eg some form of comprehensive planning/spec workflow is best modeled as an extension vs natively built in. And the extension still ends up feeling “native” in use

mongrelion 8mo ago

Pi ships with powerful defaults but skips features like sub-agents and plan mode Does anyone have an idea as to why this would be a feature? don't you want to have a discussion with your agent to iron out the details before moving onto the implementation (build) phase? In any case, looks cool :) EDIT 1: Formatting EDIT 2: Thanks everyone for your input. I was not aware of the extensibility model that pi had in mind or that you can also iterate your plan on a PLAN.md file. Very interesting approach. I'll have a look and give it a go.

ramoz 8mo ago
See my comment in the thread but there is an intuitive extension architecture that makes integrating these type of things feel native. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/coding-agent#extensions https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/codin...
alvivar 8mo ago
I plan all the time. I just tell Pi to create a Plan.md file, and we iterate on it until we are ready to implement.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- jauntywundrkind 8mo ago
  Agreed. I rarely find the guardrails of plan to be necessary; I basically never use it on opencode. I have some custom commands I use to ask for plan making, discussion. As for subagents, Pi has sessions. And it has a full session tree & forking. This is one of my favorite things, in all harnesses: build the thing with half the context, then keep using that as a checkpoint, doing new work, from that same branch point. It means still having a very usable lengthy context window but having good fundamental project knowledge loaded.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]

mccoyb 8mo ago

Pi has made all the right design choices. Shout out to Mario (and Armin the OG stan) — great taste shows itself.

semiinfinitely 8mo ago
I do not understand why in the age of ai coding we would implement this in javascript
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- Blackarea 8mo ago
  yes! I just don't understand that as well. Up until some time ago claud code's preferred install was a npm i, wasn't it? Please serious answers for why anyone would use a web language for a terminal app
  - fragmede 8mo ago
    Because it's what the person writing it's preferred language. So it can share code with the web app. Because writing it in javascript is easier than writing it in raw brute forced assembly.
- mccoyb 8mo ago
  It’s straightforward: JavaScript is a dynamic language, which allows code (for instance, code implementing an extension to the harness) to be executed and loaded while the harness is running. This is quite nice — I do think there’s a version of pi’s design choices which could live in a static harness, but fully covering the same capabilities as pi without a dynamic language would be difficult. (You could imagine specifying a programmable UI, etc — various ways to extend the behavior of the system, and you’d like end up with an interpreter in the harness) At least, you’d like to have a way to hot reload code (Elixir / Erlang could be interesting) This is my intuition, at least.
  - 8mo ago

rahimnathwani 8mo ago

Hugging Face now provides instructions for using local models in Pi: https://x.com/victormustar/status/2026380984866710002 https://x.com/victormustar/status/2026380984866710002

lukasb 8mo ago

But I can't use my Codex plan with it, right? I have to use an API key?

mccoyb 8mo ago
You can use your Codex plan with it. OpenAI endorsed it several weeks ago, as far as I remember. That could change, however, but now seems safe.
- ac29 8mo ago
  You can use your Claude or Gemini plan with it too for now, though Anthropic and Google have made it clear this is a ToS violation.
theshrike79 8mo ago
Pi makes GPT-5.3-Codex act about on par with Claude easily. There's something in the default Codex harness that makes it fight with both arms behind its back, maybe the sandboxing is overly paranoid or something. With Pi I can one-shot many features faster and more accurately than with Codex-cli.

agentwyz 8mo ago

[flagged]

suralind 8mo ago

I’ve been testing it for a few days on pretty much clean install (no customizations/extensions) and it’s ok. Not sure if I like it yet.

muratsu 8mo ago

I’m working with a friend to build an ui around Pi to make it more user friendly for people who prefer to work with a gui (ala conductor). You can check out the repo: https://github.com/philipp-spiess/modern https://github.com/philipp-spiess/modern

ramoz 8mo ago
In the same spirit, I also ported a planning UI extension for Pi. https://plannotator.ai/blog/plannotator-meets-pi/ https://plannotator.ai/blog/plannotator-meets-pi/

elyase 8mo ago

there is also pz a drop-in replacement for pi rewritten in Zig. 1.7MB static binary, 3ms startup, 1.4MB RAM idle. Find more at: https://github.com/elyase/awesome-personal-ai-assistants?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/elyase/awesome-personal-ai-assistants?tab...

_neil 8mo ago
Direct link to pz for those on mobile: https://github.com/joelreymont/pz https://github.com/joelreymont/pz
snthpy 8mo ago
Cool, thanks for this. What about the extensions though? For me the point about pi is minimal base plus configurable extensions you choose.
mccoyb 8mo ago
Written by a person who is infamously annoying open source maintainers with AI slop PRs (see the DWARF debacle in OCaml) … and missing much of pi’s philosophy Pass for me.

tmustier 8mo ago

I haven’t met a single person who has tried pi for a few days and not made it their daily driver. Once you taste the freedom of being able to set up your tool exactly how you like, there’s really no going back. and you can build cool stuff on top of it too!

ck_one 8mo ago
What self-built capabilities do you like the most that claude code doesn't offer?
- tomashubelbauer 8mo ago
  Not the person you replied to, but I'll stress the point that it is not just what you can add that Claude Code doesn't offer, but also what you don't need to add that Claude Code does offer that you don't want. I dislike many things about Claude Code, but I'll pick subagents as one example. Don't want to use them? Tough luck. (AFAIK, it's been a while since I used CC, maybe it is configurable now or was always and I never discovered that.) With Pi, I just didn't install an extension for that, which I suspect exists, but I have a choice of never finding out.
  - prettyblocks 8mo ago
    You can just put "Never use subagents" in your CLAUDE.md and it will honor it, no?
    - tomashubelbauer 8mo ago
      IME CLAUDE.md rarely gets fully honored. I've left HN comments before about how I had to convert some CLAUDE.md instructions to pre-commit deterministic checks due to how often they were ignored. My guesstimate is that it is about 70 % reliable. That's with Opus 4.5. I've since switched to GPT-5.2 and now GPT-5.3 Codex and use Codex CLI, Pi and OpenCode, not CC, so maybe things have changed with a new system prompt or with the introduction of Opus 4.6.
  - 8mo ago

thevinter 8mo ago

Pi was probably the best ad for Claude Code I ever saw. After my max sub expired I decided to try Kimi on a more open harness, and it ended up being one of the worst (and eye opening experiences) I had with the agentic world so far. It was completely alienating and so much 'not for me', that afterwards I went back and immediately renewed my claude sub. https://www.thevinter.com/blog/bad-vibes-from-pi https://www.thevinter.com/blog/bad-vibes-from-pi

mccoyb 8mo ago
> I would say that the project actively expects you to be downloading them to fill any missing gaps you might have. Where did you get this perspective from? > I thought pi and its tools were supposed to be minimal and extensible. So why is a subagent extension bundling six agents I never asked for that I can’t disable or remove? Why do you think a random subagents extension is under the same philosophy as pi? Your blog post says little about pi proper, it's essentially concerned with issues you had with the ecosystem of extensions, often made by random people who either do or do not get the philosophy? Why would that be up to pi to enforce?
- the_mitsuhiko 8mo ago
  Sharing extensions is very much the philosophy. Using them however is less so. Pi ships with docs that include extensions and the agent looks there for inspiration if you ask it to build a custom extension. Looking at what others publish is useful!
NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago
hypegrift
CGamesPlay 8mo ago
> if I start the agent in ./folder then anything outside of ./folder should be off limits unless I explicitly allow it, and the same goes for bash where everything not on an allowlist should be blocked by default. Here's the problem with Claude Code: it acts like it's got security, but it's the equivalent of a "do not walk on grass" sign. There's no technical restrictions at play, and the agent can (maliciously or accidentally) bypass the "restrictions". That's why Pi doesn't have restrictions by default. The logic is: no matter what agent you are using, you should be using it in a real sandbox (container, VM, whatever).

isagawa-co 8mo ago

Interesting approach to planning via extensions. I took a similar direction with enforcement. A governance loop that hooks into the agent's tool calls and blocks execution until protocol is followed. Every 10 actions (configurable), the agent re-centers. No permission popups, but the agent literally can't skip steps. Open source: https://github.com/isagawa-co/isagawa-kernel https://github.com/isagawa-co/isagawa-kernel

chriswarbo 8mo ago

I've been using pi via the pi-coding-agent Emacs package, which uses its RPC mode to populate a pair of Markdown buffers (one for input, one for chat), which I find much nicer than the awful TUIs used by harnesses like gemini-cli (Emacs works perfectly well as a TUI too!). The extensibility is really nice. It was easy to get it using my preferred issue tracker; and I've recently overridden the built-in `read` and `write` commands to use Emacs buffers instead. I'd like to override `edit` next, but haven't figured out an approach that would play to the strengths of LLMs (i.e. not matching exact text) and Emacs (maybe using tree-sitter queries for matches?). I also gave it a general-purpose `emacs_eval`, which it has used to browse documentation with EWW.

dnouri 8mo ago
Nice! I'm curious to hear how you're mapping `read` and `write` to Emacs buffers. Does that mean those commands open those files in Emacs and read and write them there? Let me also drop a link to the Pi Emacs mode here for anyone who wants to check it out: https://github.com/dnouri/pi-coding-agent https://github.com/dnouri/pi-coding-agent -- or use: M-x package-install pi-coding-agent We've been building some fun integrations in there like having RET on the output of `read`, `write`, `edit` tool calls open the corresponding file and location at point in an Emacs buffer. Parity with Pi's fantastic session and tree browsing is hopefully landing soon, too. Also: Magit :-)
- chriswarbo 8mo ago
  I've pushed the extension to GitHub at https://github.com/Warbo/pi-extensions/tree/master/extensions/emacsclient https://github.com/Warbo/pi-extensions/tree/master/extension... The implementation is pretty terrible: a giant string of vibe-coded Emacs Lisp is sent to emacsclient, which performs the actions and sends back a string of JSON. It's been interesting to iterate on the approach: watching the LLM (in my case Claude) attempting to use the tools; noticing when it struggles or makes incorrect assumptions; and updating the tool, documentation and defaults to better match those expectations. I've also written some Emacs Lisp which opens Pi and tells it to "Action the request/issue/problem at point in buffer '<current-buffer>'" https://github.com/Warbo/warbo-emacs-d/blob/a13a1e02f5203476d475dc7deb8f18be632f93c0/personal/warbo-llm.el#L81 https://github.com/Warbo/warbo-emacs-d/blob/a13a1e02f5203476... It feels similar to the file-watching provided by Aider (which uses inotify to spot files containing `# AI!` or `# AI?`), which I've previously used with FIXME and TODO comments in code; but it also works well in non-file things, e.g. error messages and test failures in `shell-mode`, and issues listed in the Emacs UI I wrote for the Artemis bug tracker (Claude just gets the issue number from the current line, and plugs that into a Pi extension I made for Artemis :-) )

type4 8mo ago

What are people using to cost efficiently use this? I was using a Google Ultra sub which gave enough but that’s gone now. ChatGPT $20/month is alright but I got locked out for a day after a couple hours. Considering the GitHub pro plus plan.

beacon294 8mo ago
FWIW the lockout probably wasn't related... maybe the content you were working on or your context window management somehow triggered something?
lambda 8mo ago
Qwen3 Coder Next in llama.cpp on my own machine. I'm an AI hater, but I need to experiment with it occasionally, I'm not going to pay someone rent for something they trained on my own GitHub, Stack overflow, and Reddit posts.
rahimnathwani 8mo ago
You could try minimax 2.5 via openrouter.
- ursuscamp 8mo ago
  MiniMax has an incredibly affordable coding plan for $10/month. It has a rolling five hour limit of 100 prompts. 100 prompts doesn't sound like much, but in typical AI company accounting fashion, 1 prompt is not really 1 prompt. I have yet to come even close to hitting the limit with heavy use.
UncleOxidant 8mo ago
Run Qwen3-coder-next locally. That's what I'm doing (using LMstudio). It's actually a surprisingly capable model. I've had it working on some LLVM-IR manipulation and microcode generation for a kind of VLIW custom processor. I've been pleasantly surprised that it can handle this (LLVM is not easy) - there are also verilog code that define the processor's behavior that it reads to determine the microcode format and expected processor behavior. When I do hit something that it seems to struggle with I can go over to antigravity and get some free Gemini 3 flash usage.

indigodaddy 8mo ago

too bad I cannot star this.. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/coding-agent https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/tree/main/packages/codin...

gtirloni 8mo ago

What's a coding harness? Claude Code is a "harness" and not a TUI?

ErikBjare 8mo ago
If you run Claude Code with `-p --output-format json` it's no longer a TUI, but it's still a harness.
jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
The fact that it's a tui isn't particularly relevant. It could be a gui or cli and provide very similar value. Nearly all of its value is facilitating your interaction with the LLM, the tools it can use, and how it uses them.
- gtirloni 8mo ago
  We used to call these "libraries".
  - jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
    Harness is an appropriate name. It comes from reinforcement learning world where you need to build the proper scaffolding for it to optimize for the goal you want it to. This is very similar to what the agent is doing. You are building the appropriate environment for it to be able to complete the task most reliably etc Not just functions/tools and documentation available (which is similar to a library), also context and critically, enforcement of behavior. This is probably the key thing that makes it a "harness". If the agent can do whatever it wants, it's not in a harness.

qazplm17 8mo ago

Pi treats you like an adult and shows whatever the fuck LLM is doing rather than actively hiding shit from the user. And just for that, once you tasted the freedom and transparency, there’s no way to go back to CC.

TZubiri 8mo ago
I think OpenCode is the same. They are all open source though so you can just find out whats going on if you want right?
WXLCKNO 8mo ago
After 2.20.0 of Claude code where they started not showing what files are read / searches are made by default .. I fucking love how easy it was to ditch Claude code for pi.

moonlion_eth 8mo ago

ive been using pi for about a week as daily driver and so far im happy with it. I really like the modular concept and also that its rather minimal

mobrienv 8mo ago

Another batteries included pi setup. Built a lightweight mobile webui to run it on termux and code on my phone. https://github.com/mikeyobrien/rho https://github.com/mikeyobrien/rho

rglover 8mo ago

Excited to give this a try, looks really well done.

TZubiri 8mo ago

Wtf is that example gif? The prompt shown is "Who's your daddy and what does he do?" Is this a joke or tech? Is the author a dev or a clown?

NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago
No one cares about your opinions. This coding agent certainly couldn't give a fuck.
enneff 8mo ago
It’s a quote from the movie Kindergarten Cop.

fnord77 8mo ago

I mean using the captive agents is much cheaper than supplying your api key to a 3rd party agent.

CGamesPlay 8mo ago

To me, the most interesting thing about Pi and the "claw" phenomenon is what it means for open source. It's becoming passé to ask for feature requests and even to submit PRs to open source repos. Instead of extensions you install, you download a skill file that tells a coding agent how to add a feature. The software stops being an artifact and starts being a living tool that isn't the same as anyone else's copy. I'm curious to see what tooling will emerge for collaborating with this new paradigm.

axelthegerman 8mo ago
And how great it will be to troubleshoot any issues because everyone is basically running a distinct piece of software
- sshine 8mo ago
  ... made minutes ago.
  - krickelkrackel 8mo ago
    So everybody will be using (sometimes slightly, sometimes entirely) different software. Like mutations, these adapt to the specific problems in the situation they were prompted to be programmed.
- wrxd 8mo ago
  I don’t want to be the one who has to upgrade this software + vibe coded patches. It’s going to be very likely that once something is patched is to be considered as diverged and very hard to upgrade
- theshrike79 8mo ago
  It's like the dude who monkey-patches their car and goes to the dealer to complain why the suspension is stiff. It's because you put 2by4's in place of the shocks, you absolute muppet. And then they either give them a massive bill to fix it properly or politely show them out. Same will happen in self-modifying software. Some people are self-aware enough to know that "I made this, it's my problem to fix", some will complain to the maker of the harness they used and will be summarily shown the door.

20022026 8mo ago

Anyone tried pi with 5.3-codex vs codex cli?

rcarmo 8mo ago
I run it almost exclusively with codex models. Zero issues.

TacticalCoder 8mo ago

Naming skills though...

ianlpaterson 8mo ago

Coming from OpenClaw, it's pretty amazing how fast pi is, particularly paired with Qwen3 that dropped today. It's a magical time.

kristianpaul 8mo ago
Indeed, it seems to just works with a self hosted Qwen3 coder next.
- ianlpaterson 8mo ago
  yes!
jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
What dropped today? Wasn't Qwen3 Coder Next released beginning of the month? Qwen3.5 released a couple of days ago but I'm not that RAM rich
- breisa 8mo ago
  Alibaba released a whole set of new Qwen 3.5 models including a ~120B and a ~35B MoE.
  - jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
    Nice. 27B looks reasonable too.
    - ianlpaterson 8mo ago
      First impressions of Qwen3.5 35b are that it's amazing
      - jasonjmcghee 8mo ago
        Amazing compared to local models or? How would you compare it to, say, Sonnet 4.5 and Qwen3 Coder Next? I'm guessing it's fast due to 3B experts

buremba 8mo ago

I spent 3 months adopting Codex and Claude Code SDKs only to realize they're just vendor lock-in and brittle. They're intended to be used as CLI so it's not programmable enough as a library. After digging into OpenClaw codebase, I can safely say that the most of its success comes from the underlying harness, pi agent. pi plugins support adding hooks at every stage, from tool calls to compaction and let you customize the TUI UI as well. I use it for my multi-tenant Openclaw alternative https://github.com/lobu-ai/lobu https://github.com/lobu-ai/lobu If you're building an agent, please don't use proprietary SDKs from model providers. Just stick to ai-sdk or pi agent.

burgerquizz 8mo ago
how do you replicate the claude code system prompts in pi? i have tried using claude agebt sdk without the claude code preset, and it is quite bad
- Munksgaard 8mo ago
  Pretty easy, the prompts can be seen here[0] and pi supports setting SYSTEM.md. 0: https://cchistory.mariozechner.at/ https://cchistory.mariozechner.at/
  - Majromax 8mo ago
    For all of the recent talk about how Anthropic relies on heavy cache optimization for claude-code, it certainly seems like session-specific information (the exact datestamp, the pid-specific temporary directory for memory storage) enters awfully early in the system prompt.
siva7 8mo ago
I also wondered for months why it feels so difficult to use Openai or Anthropic SDKs until i came to a similar conclusion.
bjackman 8mo ago
IIUC to reliably use 3P tools you need to use API billing, right? Based on my limited experimentation this is an order of magnitude more expensive than consumer subscriptions like Claude Pro, do I have that right? ("Limited experimentation" = a few months ago I threw $10 into the Anthropic console and did a bit of vibe coding and found my $10 disappeared within a couple of hours). If so, that would support your concern, it does kinda sound like they're selling marginal Claude Code / Gemini CLI tokens at a loss. Which definitely smells like an aggressive lockin strategy.

reacharavindh 8mo ago

I began with pi, and have been using oh-my-pi the last two weeks. https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi More of a batteries included version of pi.

self_awareness 8mo ago
Are you running it in some kind of sandbox? Does it have sandboxing features?
- reacharavindh 8mo ago
  I dont. I use this as my coding harness (replacement of gemini-cli/claudecode etc). I dont want to sandbox it because I expect it to be used only for coding on projects. I dont want to over complicate it. I am building my own assistant as an AI harness - that is definitely getting sandboxed to run only as a VM on my Mac.
- neop1x 8mo ago
  I use a sandbox example extension with comes with Pi, it uses the anthropic sandbox runtime (bubblewrap on linux). The runtime has one bug and needs one improvement (I've made PRs, no response yet). Pi's sandbox example extension does not block internal tools (read/write) according to rules, I've created a PR but can't submit because of Pi's OSS vacation BS... https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/compare/main...k3a:pi-mono:sandbox-tool-patterns https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/compare/main...k3a:pi-mo... I am quite happy with my patched forks for now
  - self_awareness 8mo ago
    I just told PI to generate itself a permissioned_* equivalents of read,write,bash,edit. Now, permissioned_read,permissioned_write,permissioned_edit have full access to anything from current dir and deeper, and permissioned_bash is always permission-gated. Default read,edit,write,bash are disabled. It seems to work really good. Generally, I'm in awe. I think I've already changed the way I work.
8mo ago

thepasch 8mo ago

Stop advertising pi, people. It _somehow_ continued to fly somewhat under the radar after that whole OpenClaw nonsense. Don’t make Anthropic’s sic their bloodhounds on them like they did on OpenCode.

tietjens 8mo ago
pi is an officially accepted harness of either Anthropic or OpenAI. I forgot which.
raincole 8mo ago
Interestingly, since OpenClaw, there has been ~one post about Pi every week. But practically no one voted any of them except this one.
kristianpaul 8mo ago
People deserve to know it exists, I got tired of even OpenCode workflows/agents, installed OpenSpec but all this wrapped todos still not how i wanted I needed more control but dint wanted to write my own tool, then i ended knowing about pi, this got me interested at first read: No plan mode. Write plans to files, or build it with extensions, or install a package. No built-in to-dos. Use a TODO.md file, or build your own with extensions. No background bash. Use tmux. Full observability, direct interaction. This is very important to have control and ownership. Pi is not for everyone, but the ones eventually want to have tools like (read, bash, edit, write, grep, find, ls) as building blocks.

mr_o47 8mo ago

I recently discovered this via a YouTube video a few days ago I really like the customization aspect of it and you can build tools on fly and even switch model mid session There’s another project here called oh my pi has anyone here tried it

raffkede 8mo ago

it even runs inside a browser I'll publish my browserpi if someone is interested I did not dare to add a pull request with my slop but i would love to show the fork and create a pull request if there is broader interest

vinibrito 8mo ago
No need to push to normal repo, just publish your fork, I'd like to see it

sheerun 8mo ago

This domain must have costed $$$$

thomascountz 8mo ago
pi.dev domain graciously donated by exe.dev Notwithstanding the donation, this domain must have costed $$$$

solarkraft 8mo ago

I happen to be somewhat familiar with OpenCode and am considering using it as a personal AI workspace (some chat & agentic behavior, not worrying about initiative behavior just yet, I’d try to DIY memory with local files and access to my notes) because it seems to have a decent ecosystem. Pi appears to have a smaller, less “pre-made” ecosystem, but with more flexibility, enthusiasm and extensibility. Is this correct? Should I look towards Pi over OpenCode? What are the UI options?

amunozo 8mo ago
I have the same question as you, but I want to add that I used OpenCode for general tasks like writing, organization and such but with a context of .md files and it works wonders. And like you, I am considering trying a better suited harness for this task.
- solarkraft 8mo ago
  What issues are you facing with OpenCode? I looked a bit into the reasoning for Pi’s design (https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/#toc_13 https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/#to...) and, while it does seem to do a lot of things very well around extensibility, I do miss support for permissions, MCP and perhaps Todos and a server mode. OpenCode seems a lot more complete in that regard, but I can well imagine that people have adapted Pi for these use cases (OpenClaw seems to have all of these). So it’s definitely not out of the race yet, but I still appreciate OpenCodes relative seeming completeness in comparison.
  - miroljub 8mo ago
    > while it does seem to do a lot of things very well around extensibility, https://pi.dev/packages https://pi.dev/packages > I do miss support for permissions, As soon as your agent can write and execute code, your permissions are just a security theater. If you care, just do proper sandboxing. If not, there are extensions for that. > MCP Again, Pi is extensible. pi install pi-mcp-adapter Now, you can connect to any mcp. > and perhaps Todos At least 10 different todo extensions. Pick which one you like. If you don't like any of them, ask Pi to write one for you. > and a server mode. Pi has rpc mode, which is a kind of server. If that's not enough, you could extend it. > OpenCode seems a lot more complete in that regard, Yes, but good luck working with Opencode if you don't like their plan-mode. Or todo support. And MCP. You pay their cost in complexity and tokens even if you don't use them or you don't like how they work. > but I can well imagine that people have adapted Pi for these use cases (OpenClaw seems to have all of these). So it’s definitely not out of the race yet, but I still appreciate OpenCodes relative seeming completeness in comparison. There's also an oh-my-pi fork if you want an out-of-the-box experience. Still, in my experience, nothing beats Pi in terms of customizability. It's the first piece of software that I can easily make completely to my liking. And I say that as a decade old Emacs user.

carderne 8mo ago

The people pushing oh-my-pi seem to have missed the point of pi... Downloading 200k+ lines of additional code seems completely against the philosophy of building up your harness, letting your agent self-improve, relying on code that you control. If you want bags of features, rather clone oh-my-pi somewhere, and get your agent to bring in bits of it a time, checking, reviewing, customising as you go.

manojlds 8mo ago
Yeah ohmypi is garbage. The point is you have a thing shell and add your own on top by just talking to pi itself or pick in selective extensions.

_pdp_ 8mo ago

I still don't get why would you want to use a terminal app to code when you can do all of this through IDE extension which does the same except it is better integrated. You can open a grid of windows inside vscode too and it comes back up exactly as it was on reload.

theshrike79 8mo ago
When I use a CLI agent to code, I don't need the IDE for anything. Think of it more like directing a coworker or subcontractor via text chat. You tell them what you want and get a result, then you test it if it's what you want and give more instructions if needed. I literally just fixed a maintenance program on my own server while working my $dayjob. ssh to server, start up claude and tell it what's wrong, tab away. Then I came back some time later, read what it had done, tested the script and immediately got a few improvement ideas. Gave them to Claude, tabbed out, etc. Took me maybe 15 minutes of active work while chatting on Slack and managing my other tasks. I never needed to look at the code at any point. If it works and tests pass, why do I care what it looks like?
- _pdp_ 8mo ago
  I suppose we are working on different problems. In my own experience I cannot blindly accept code without even looking at it even for a few moments because I've had many situations where the code was simply doing the wrong things... including tests are completely wrong and testing the wrong assumptions. So yah, even when I review trivial changes I still look at the diff view to see if it makes sense. And IDEs make code review a lot easier than diff. Btw, this experience is not from lack of trying. We use coding agent extensively (I would assume more than the typical org looking at our bill) and while they are certainly very, very helpful and I cannot describe how much effort they are really saving us, there is absolutely zero chance of pushing something out without reviewing it first - same applies for code written by AI agent or a coworker.
chriswarbo 8mo ago
> I still don't get why would you want to use a terminal app to code when you can do all of this through IDE extension which does the same except it is better integrated. I agree. I tried Gemini CLI for a while, and didn't like how separate I felt from the underlying files: rather than doing minor cleanup myself, the activation energy of switching to a separate editor and opening the same files was too high, so I'd prompt the LLM to it instead. Which was often an exercise in frustration, as it would take many rounds of explanation for such tiny payoffs; maybe even fiddling with system prompts and markdown files, to try and avoid wasting so much time in the future... I've been using Pi for a few weeks now, and have managed to integrate it quite deeply into Emacs. I run it entirely via RPC mode (JSON over stdio), so I don't really know (or care) about its terminal UI :-)

alabhyajindal 8mo ago

I am also going to now implement an existing project and invent a different name for it. Look out for Waterfox, a minimal web consumer.

bankombinator 8mo ago

Mario mentioned in hackernews.

squeefers 8mo ago

minimal indeed. why are we regressing back to terminals now? ive seen this in the rust world mainly

jacobgorm 8mo ago
Some of us never left the terminal. Welcome to the future.
chriswarbo 8mo ago
Doesn't need a terminal: run it in RPC mode to send/receive JSON over stdio. That's how the pi-coding-agent Emacs package works, which is the only way I've ever used Pi. It seems pretty well done: when I added permission requests to the `bash` tool, the "Are you sure y/N" requests started appearing just like they were native to Emacs.

nacozarina 8mo ago

too many things named ‘pi’, kmn

Veen 8mo ago
Its original name was more distinctive but less "enterprise friendly". https://shittycodingagent.ai https://shittycodingagent.ai
- chid 8mo ago
  interestingly that's what comes up when you search for pi-coding-agent rather than the new domain.

twsted 8mo ago

I do not understand some of the comments here: openclaw uses pi. It seems stange also that even Steinberger in his interviews is not giving pi the proper attribution.

Vegenoid 8mo ago

What models are you all using with Pi? How much are you paying on monthly or weekly basis for your usage? I'm very interested in it, but my budget is constrained and the usage granted by a $20/month Claude plan seems much more affordable than when I've tried API-based access with other agents. Unfortunately, this locks me in to Claude Code.

neop1x 8mo ago
Use OpenRouter, lots of great open-weights models like MiniMax, Kimi K2, Mistral, Qwen, ...
- nebben64 8mo ago
  so are people pairing OpenRouter with open agent harnesses like Pi or OpenCode?
kristianpaul 8mo ago
Qwen3 coder next works very well. I started with 20usd/month ollama cloud and switch to 200usd then decided host my own llm with a gigabyte ai atop since now i'm using llms agents everywhere on my home lab

NamlchakKhandro 8mo ago

100% this is where OpenCode missed the boat. PI is what it looks like when you treat your Plugin sdk as the golden path