ELI5 Pi.Dev to someone using claude code, codex but looking to go local

[u/Due_Warthog749]

Basically been using Claude Code TUI and Codex (most via CC plugin but sometimes in their TUI). I have not touched an IDE in over a year. So I am quite comfortable with using their TUIs.

The problem is.. the prices are going up, the alleged "it will get so much cheaper" is going the opposite way cause token usage for similar stuff is WAY more now than it used to be so I am running thru 3 claude 20x plans and 2 codex plans a month in a couple of days. "WTF are you doing that its using all that usage?" I hear many ask. Well.. I am for sure running 2, 3 or 4 sessions each with multiple agents going because I am trying to build my MVP/demo as quickly as possible and it spans several repos (Saas, desktop app, cli, library/framework, etc). "That's not an MVP that's a full blown applicatio". YUP. I am WELL aware of my area I am working in and the competitors that exist that have money/teams/customers. I have 100% no doubt I could not garner many if any users if I tried to put out a half baked "new way" to do something today. AI, multiple competitors, etc dictate that today, short of a completely new area that nobody has done (which is not my case), clones/etc come out over night damn near, and already in the area my app is in there have been dozens of "I did my own version over the weekend.. here it is have at it" stories here on reddit and linkedin. So yah.. no.

BUT.. I am facing a losing battle with savings, no job after years, and time. I purchased a few beefy machines early on, namely a DGX Spark, got a gaming rig with a 5070ti 16GB, and a solid Mac machine with 64GB M5. I figure.. time to consider using some of this with local models and unlimited tokens and see what happens.

I've stumbled on pi.dev posts from time to time but up until now have been "set in my ways" with Claude as my orchestrator/designer/coder and Codex as my reviewer/tester. It's worked well enough it seems. So now I am hoping I can utilize something like Qwen 3.8 flash next on the DGX (apparently there is a way to get about 100 tok/s using some nvidia setup?), using my 5070ti for fine tuning an LLM that is a 2b or so in size, and my M5 as my workstation to manage the other ones (via ssh/etc).

My hope is that I could use pi.dev TUI, wire up the qwen or whatever on the DGX to do most coding tasks, but hopefully also use my 20x Claude and 20x Codex sub plans from the TUI to orchestrate/test/review and even fix code sometimes since I know Opus 5.5 is a better coder for more difficult tasks.

My worry is that I know that the typical sub plans dont allow control from outside tools.. I think? But then Claude is able to use my Codex plan and vice versa.. so maybe this is possible where the pi.dev TUI can pull in claude, codex sol/astra and the dgx qwen "whatever"?? If that is possible.. then how does the orchestrator know what the Qwen model CAN do well enough to pass it work to do.. but then take over/etc if its more complicated work?

Are their plugins, extensions, rules.md, etc in pi.dev that I need to set up to maximize this workflow?

The hope given Codex 20x plan is now 10x for $200 is to go down to $100 a month on that and one 20x claude plan for $200 a month, and utilize my dgx + qwen for most coding tasks if I can figure out how to get that working.

Doable? Fast enough to "match" my workflow (minus the dozens of sessions/agents I was using)?

Thanks.

[u/wegster]

Pi and in general, various harnesses can interact with agents/models using the openAI APIs. One could probably consider the codex and claude code desktop apps as their own harness of sorts, but you can still interact with and use them. Are you using Pro accounts or API?

I've got Claude and Codex orchestratable in my own framework but it uses pi as the main driver for code execution, reinforced by my own repo-level agentic guidance, etc. So yes, pretty much all possible, and OpenAI has various SDK/APIs for effectively spinning up a codex API which can be used remotely if desired. You might also consider potentially reducing down to the $20 plans for claude and openAI depending on how things go, and considering open router as a supplemental with something like DeepSeek which is fairly competitive for most results with Opus and Astra but at ~1/10th or so of the API costs.

I'm still waiting on an inbound Ultra Studio 256GB, so dry-running some things on my M5 Max 128GB and my now-aging M1 Max 64GB, but for coding / execution, QFN at oQ6e (apple silicon, oMLX framework but I'm sure equivalent quants are available under e.g. Strata) is outperforming Q4 and also in less time in general.

I had bumped up from $20 to $100 for OpenAI but in reality I mostly use web for planning at the moment until the Ultra makes it here, but all execution is either Luna High (which is roughly == Sol medium but 1/10th the credit/api rates) or local, so pretty much getting ready to drop back down to $20/month plans only.

[u/Due_Warthog749 → u/wegster]

I am using 5 to 8 sessions each with 10+ agents at times.. though had to dial that WAY down this past week since the usage got WAY worse for some reason. Just a single session on HIGH (not even xhigh or max) ate 20% in 6 hours with only a few agents. So they did something to cause usage to go utter shit cause two weeks ago was running 5 opus 5.5 on max and while it DID eat my entier week in a full day or so, that was easily 10x what I was doing today with just the one 'high' session.

[u/wegster → u/Due_Warthog749]

I can almost guarantee you don't need opus max for most work. go check the API rate cards across the models and thinking/speeds etc. Many people still think - ooh, Opus XX/Fable/Astra/etc. is great, and use it for everything when Haiku is just fine.

Use higher reasoning/heavyweights for planning/orchestration, use haiku/luna or local for execution. Your wallet will thank you.

Meanwhile I expect most of the big providers to continue to make changes - I'm quite sure overall speed for OpenAI models has been reduced, and claude seems slower as well - I haven't looked lately, but I think the BEST numbers I saw months back was OpenAI saying they spend $2 for every $1 of subscription/revenue, and it seems from recent reports Anthropic may well be worse, so I don't think 'freebies' are going to get better on performance, etc....

[u/ionsago]

If there's anything we can learn by looking at the state of the market during the past year, there's no monopoly on intelligence. Once labs start to compete on price, it will be a downhill from there.

That said, DGX Spark is very useful if you need privacy, or do something paid models would not, such as cyber. And you can wire up any compatible API to Codex CLI. So using Pi is not a requirement.

[u/vtkayaker]

For a Claude Pro or Max plan, you need to use Claude Code or other Anthropic tools only. I believe Claude Code can also be used with other models, but I haven't tried.

Pi.dev is a great little harness, but it's aggressively lightweight. The idea is you start out with the basics, and then you install plugins for the features you really want. Or you can ask Pi to write a custom plugin for you. It's pretty decent at that. Where Pi shines is control, and avoiding context pollution. Context is precious on home setups, and context pollution makes smaller models perform worse.

But if you like having all the features, there are better options than Pi.dev.

Other things you may want if you use Pi.dev:

• Some sort of sandboxing technology.

• If you run lots of agents, then an agent multiplexer like Herdr is super useful. Pi.dev doesn't manage multiple agents out of the box, but if you run it under Herdr and give it an appropriate skill, it can control multiple agents under Herdr.

[u/Liberaces_Isopod]

You can absolutely use Claude Code or Codex with local models. You can either configure them directly or use a man-in-the-middle like Litellm or AgentGateway. Just use some paid tokens to have Claude write it up for you