From my limited time using pure Pi, I found quite a few of the plugins lacking and had no desire to upgrade/fix and maintain them myself. I know others feel differently though.
I like the idea of keep Pi minimal but having “official”, high quality optional plugins to make it more usable.
Pi makes you think about what you’re doing with it on purpose. This defeats that, as the Mario quote on the page says, and therefore isn’t worth using.
People really need to try out “less is more”. The new models are quite smart, so suffocating their context with dozens of MCPs and skills isn’t necessary like it used to be. A cli tool with good built in help and good errors is amazingly easy for the model to figure out.
If Pi is too minimal for you and you don’t want to dig into it, OpenCode is pretty good out of the box. I use it for general work I haven’t setup Pi for. The only thing I add to OpenCode is some commands that are shortcuts to save me typing frequent prompts, and a subagent with a fixed model for implementing changes.
I like the Pi approach, but I think I didn't "hold it correctly" so to say.
I would like to migrate away from Claude Code and use Pi as my "peimary" harness. I really like in particular how it manages conversation trees and branches.
But I think I didn't do a good job in customizing it for my work. While nothing dramatic, I think the LLM I was using did a better job on Claude Code than on Pi a couple of time when I tried giving it the same work.
I use lazyvim for all my neovim config. Does it fly in the face of the configurability or minimalism of vim? I'd argue no, but rather it is an expected outcome of a highly configurable system. Some people don't want to think about this kind of thing, they just want something that works.
On the one hand, sure, why not have a default install throw a bunch of bells+whistles via skills and extensions.
But I like pi precisely because it is so minimal. I want understand and work around the simplest possible agentic coding setup, find the sharp edges, maybe even improve my prompting ability. And doing all three with a locally hosted LLM.
At some point, if I don't understand the foundations, am I just punting on actually thinking about what I'm doing?
Of course, making individual choices about how to do agentic coding are precisely just making individual choices. People should do what makes them happy and productive.
I think the developers of Pi made a supply chain mistake by stripping down the core agent and requiring features like subagents to load plugins written by some random person.
Pi is meant for people who know what they are doing. If you dont fall into that category use OpenCode, etc. The whole idea is that you customize Pi to your own needs by asking it to modify itself through extensions.
That said, sometimes it is really easy to leverage existing extensions. You run the risk of supply chain attack though. I installed one extension that was useful, modified it to my needs and pinned it.
We are going to address this. Not by loading the agent but by finding a way to provide official plugins or blessed plugins. But we’re not yet sure what the right approach is.
Curated. Not exhaustive.
Every package is hand-picked.
Somehow I’m not convinced.
Anyway, if this works for someone, great. I’m a novice Pi user which I think would be the target audience, I don’t see why I would use this, both because it appears to be LLM slop and because it bedazzles up a tool that I started using in the first place because of its minimalism, but to each his own.
Currently using Oh My Pi (https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi) and appreciate the batteries included approach.
From my limited time using pure Pi, I found quite a few of the plugins lacking and had no desire to upgrade/fix and maintain them myself. I know others feel differently though.
I like the idea of keep Pi minimal but having “official”, high quality optional plugins to make it more usable.
Pi makes you think about what you’re doing with it on purpose. This defeats that, as the Mario quote on the page says, and therefore isn’t worth using.
People really need to try out “less is more”. The new models are quite smart, so suffocating their context with dozens of MCPs and skills isn’t necessary like it used to be. A cli tool with good built in help and good errors is amazingly easy for the model to figure out.
If Pi is too minimal for you and you don’t want to dig into it, OpenCode is pretty good out of the box. I use it for general work I haven’t setup Pi for. The only thing I add to OpenCode is some commands that are shortcuts to save me typing frequent prompts, and a subagent with a fixed model for implementing changes.
Would you say the same about something like, say, Spacemacs?
I like the Pi approach, but I think I didn't "hold it correctly" so to say.
I would like to migrate away from Claude Code and use Pi as my "peimary" harness. I really like in particular how it manages conversation trees and branches.
But I think I didn't do a good job in customizing it for my work. While nothing dramatic, I think the LLM I was using did a better job on Claude Code than on Pi a couple of time when I tried giving it the same work.
I was not sure how to improve on it though.
This thing defeats the whole purpose of Pi.
I use lazyvim for all my neovim config. Does it fly in the face of the configurability or minimalism of vim? I'd argue no, but rather it is an expected outcome of a highly configurable system. Some people don't want to think about this kind of thing, they just want something that works.
Yes, because neovim != vim :)
On the one hand, sure, why not have a default install throw a bunch of bells+whistles via skills and extensions.
But I like pi precisely because it is so minimal. I want understand and work around the simplest possible agentic coding setup, find the sharp edges, maybe even improve my prompting ability. And doing all three with a locally hosted LLM.
At some point, if I don't understand the foundations, am I just punting on actually thinking about what I'm doing?
Of course, making individual choices about how to do agentic coding are precisely just making individual choices. People should do what makes them happy and productive.
I think the developers of Pi made a supply chain mistake by stripping down the core agent and requiring features like subagents to load plugins written by some random person.
Pi is meant for people who know what they are doing. If you dont fall into that category use OpenCode, etc. The whole idea is that you customize Pi to your own needs by asking it to modify itself through extensions.
That said, sometimes it is really easy to leverage existing extensions. You run the risk of supply chain attack though. I installed one extension that was useful, modified it to my needs and pinned it.
We are going to address this. Not by loading the agent but by finding a way to provide official plugins or blessed plugins. But we’re not yet sure what the right approach is.
Somehow I’m not convinced.
Anyway, if this works for someone, great. I’m a novice Pi user which I think would be the target audience, I don’t see why I would use this, both because it appears to be LLM slop and because it bedazzles up a tool that I started using in the first place because of its minimalism, but to each his own.
haha i was waiting for this exact thing lazyvim:vim::pi:lazypi, thanks for sharing
i think to fall in love with Pi, bundled skills are a bit antithetical - you realistically only need a couple of skills that you maybe design yourself
Why does this makes more sense over OpenCode?
I personally find OpenCode's TUI atrociously awful, I guess a matter of taste.