Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/)
Any insights / suggestions / best practices?
Has anyone (other than OpenClaw) used pi? (https://shittycodingagent.ai/, https://pi.dev/)
Any insights / suggestions / best practices?
Its really fantastic. I can't imagine why you'd go through the effort using Claude Code with other models when pi is a much better harness. There's tons of extensions already available, and its trivial to prompt an LLM to create your any new extension you want. Lacking creativity and want something from another harness?
> Run <other harness> in tmux and interrogate it how feature X works, then build me the equivalent as a pi extension.
Maybe in a few years there will be obvious patterns with harnesses having built really optimal flows, but right now it works so much better to experiment and try new approaches and prompts and flows, and pi is the easiest one to tweak and make it your own.
> but right now it works so much better to experiment and try new approaches and prompts and flows, and pi is the easiest one to tweak and make it your own.
That’s what really appeals to me. I’ve been fighting Claude Code’s attempts to put everything in memory lately (which is fine for personal preferences), when I prefer the repo to contain all the actual knowledge and learnings. Made me realise how these micro-improvements could ultimately, some day, lead to lock-in.
> Run <other harness> in tmux and interrogate it how feature X works, then build me the equivalent as a pi extension.
I’ll give it a try!
Yes, it's super cool. Check Mario's latest talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dli5slNaJu0 Armin also has some videos covering it on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ArminRonacher/ Pi's Discord is still nice, even though it was a bit flooded after the openclaw thing.
I bought a $30 Z.ai Coding Plan sub to go with it. 7 million tokens has only gone through 2% of my weekly usage using the GLM-5.1 model. I am pretty happy.
I am only doing single project workflows, but with Z.ai I feel like it opens a whole new door to parallel workflows without hitting usage limits.
Yeah, that's pretty much the lines I was thinking along. Perhaps use codex for planning / reviews, but otherwise go with z.ai / minimax for actual implementation. Thanks!
Pi is a lot simpler than Claude and a lot more transparent in how it operates.
It's designed to be a small simple core with a rich API which you can use for extensions (providing skills, tools, or just modifying/extending the agent's behaviour).
It's likely that you'll eventually need to find extensions for some extended functionality, but for each feature you can pick the one that fits your need exactly (or just use Pi to hack a new extension).
I really love it. The simplicity is key. The first play project I made with it was a public transport map with GTFS data - click on a stop and get the routes and the timetables for the stop and the surrounding ones. I used Qwen3.5-35B on Mac M1 Max with oMLX. It wrote 98% of the code with very little interaction from me. And very useful is the /tree feature to go back in history when the model is on a wrong track or my instructions where not good enough. I usually work in a two path approach: first let the model explore what it needs to fulfill the task and write it into CONTEXT.md (or any other name to your liking). Then restart the session with the CONTEXT.md. That way you are always nicely operating in 5-15k context, i.e. all is very fast. Create an account for pi (or docker) and make sure it can't walk into other directories - it has bash access. Add the browser-tools to the skills and load them when useful: https://github.com/badlogic/pi-skills
No need for database MCP, I use postgres and tell it to use psql.
Occasionally I use prettier to remove indentation - the LLM makes a lot less edit errors that way. Just add the indent back before you commit. Or tell pi to do it.
had been using claude max/opus with pi and the results have been incredible. Having pi write an AGENTS.md and dip your feet into creating your own skills specific to the project.
With the anthropic billing change (not being able to use the max credits for pi) I think I have to cancel - as I'm whirring through credits now.
Going to move to the $250/mo OpenAI codex plan for now.
I was looking into this as well since Claude models are costing too much with the Extra Usage changes.
Is OpenAI codex not also charging by usage instead of subscription when using pi?
pi is what OpenClaw runs on, and so far OpenAI seems committed to it. No telling how long it will last.
i really have been enjoying pi a lot
at first i thought i was goring to build lots of extra plugins and commands but what ended up working for me is:
- i have a simpel command that pulls context from a linear issue
- simple review command
- project specific skills for common tasks
I use Daniel Meissler’s PAI and it’s been an incredible harness.
Reluctantly, the dev seems to have a stinky attitude.
He went on an "OSS vacation", which is perfectly reasonable and said he'd be back on a certain date. I had a PR open for a trivial fix, someone asked when it would land. I shared he was still away. After his return I politely asked, "@badlogic hey, what can we do to progress this? Thanks x"
I then got what I would consider an abusive reply, because he confused me with someone else. In the meantime he extended his vacation. Didn't even think his shitty attitude was worthy of an apology, that HE confused me with someone else.
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1475#discuss...
And another other thing I fixed with no attribution, just landed it himself separately. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/discussions/1080
and
https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/issues/1079#event-223896...
Now he's seemingly marked anything with my name on as a "clanker", despite all my changes being by hand.
I've been around open source enough to have a thick skin, but when i'm doing something "for fun" and someone treats you like that, i'd rather avoid it as far as possible. I certainly could not in good faith use this project for anything work related.
> Honestly, it seems you are grumpy, so it was probably a good idea to extend that vacation. Being rude just creates a more toxic environment for everyone. Maybe extend that break for the rest of the month and come back nicer? Thanks
Honestly, it seems like both of you were feeling a bit "grumpy" at the moment, but sending passive aggressiveness towards the maintainer you are trying to get to merge your code (or not your code, someone else's code?) seems like a very bold strategy regardless.
You know, when I wrote that I genuinely meant it, or at least I think i did. It wasn't supposed to be passive aggressive. :(
But that doesn't negate the maintainer talking to people like that (and taking contributions without attribution).. and the net result is I don't want to use the software, and frankly they probably won't miss me.. so the end result is neutral.. I just find it sad.
> Maybe extend that break for the rest of the month and come back nicer?
Quite sure most (perhaps >99%) adult people would consider this passive aggressive.
But yeah, I agree with you for the rest part. Why did Mario assume that bot is you...?
if a human showed up directly under some bot bullshit pinging me I'd assume they were the bot operator as well
I'm not sure how you'd be able to interpret that as anything other than passive aggressive.
You seem to have posted your polite question as a reply to the bot comment which talks about PR #1484 and not your PR. I'd say it's pretty obvious why the maintainer thought you were pushing the bot's PR.
As someone else pointed out cooler heads and less passive aggressive responses would've resolved this issue easily.
But hey, the dev was generous to give it an MIT license, you could always just fork it and what you like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯