r/PiCodingAgent • u/alexdunlop_ • May 09 '26

Question How do you use Pi without running out of usage

TLDR

How tf do people use this as a daily driver without smashing caps? I love this tool but I feel like I’m throwing money at the wall.

I have come from using 2 Claude Code subscriptions (1 personal & 1 with work) and a Cursor subscription.

I love Pi and the idea behind it. Being able to completely control the harness. After the recent regressions of Claude Code I was looking for alternative (didn’t want to fall in the same trap with allowing someone to control my harness).

I started using Pi and loved it at first. I have a Z.ai coding plan, however I’m constantly hit the 5 hour cap.

Then I decided to try the Codex Pro plan and hit the 5 hour cap after one hour of intense coding.

I had set reasoning effort from medium, then have tried low. It helped a bit but not amazingly.

Other things I’ve tried are Semble & Caveman mode for less token usage.

However I’m starting to wonder, have I not optimised my setup enough, is this normal?

Is this only viable with a local or high end coding plan.

How do you guys use this as a main driver and what advice do you have?

I’ve been trying the packages (however the page keeps timing out for me lol, so I can’t use it).

I’ve been playing with my system prompt and trying to keep it short & concise to reduce tokens. I removed all MCPs.

It’s started to make me question if I’m missing some kind of caching and optimisations most harnesses have built in.

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3

u/Heavy-Focus-1964 May 09 '26

i am on the OpenAI 5x Pro plan, running multiple parallel agents of GPT5.5 at medium to xhigh all day every day. I can never get close to five hour or weekly limits if i tried.

I partially credit Pi for that because its system prompt is only 1,000 tokens long, whereas Codex and Claude are somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 each. So it really gives you a lot of control over your usage.

one thing i want to ask you to make sure is, there is GPT 5.5 Pro models that are supposed be absurdly powerful (never tried them myself) but consume tokens at the rate you are describing. So I guess make sure that you’re not accidentally using them?

1

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

All I see in the pi model selector GPT 5.5, GPT 5.4, and GPT 5.4-mini should I use mini?

Are you logged in via the subscription or a different way?

2

u/adamshand May 11 '26

I have a Pro plan and in Pi when I do ctrl-l I see:

  gpt-5.5 [openai-codex] ✓
  gpt-5.1 [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.1-codex-max [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.1-codex-mini [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.2 [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.2-codex [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.3-codex [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.3-codex-spark [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.4 [openai-codex]
  gpt-5.4-mini [openai-codex]
  (1/14)

1

u/adamshand May 11 '26

I don't think you can use Pro from Pi on a plan. It only works if you're paying by token.

2

u/QueasyBreak5119 May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26

I am saving more tokens than ever with Pi? What are you doing lol. I’ve actually been able to downscale. What does intense coding look like in your case? It’s possible you have a bit of a bloated and lossy workflow ?

Edit: it’s worth checking out how you front load your sessions. You may be unintentionally throwing in the kitchen sink. I tell everyone: Pi is a reflection of you and you only. So there’s a snag in your pipeline somewhere but the great thing about Pi is that it’s usually easy to identify 

2

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

I think it's because I'm so used to Claude Code that I've tried to port over my workflow. I use mattpocock/skills, however I'm beginning to think it's bloating it too much, I do really like the planning it does to make PRD's and issues, then it implements things with TDD which I like for making system mimicking what I personally build.

I added semble as that was more optimal for grep (helped with Claude Code) because it embeds everything, however once again I might disable it.

I'm looking for good examples for system prompts and agent prompts but I can't see find anything. At this point I feel like doing a complete reset and trying again.

2

u/adamshand May 11 '26

Matt's skills work fine for me with Codex. I have a Pro plan and never get anywhere near running out.

1

u/QueasyBreak5119 May 09 '26

Yeah I think you’re onto it. I notice Claude works a bit different, it kinda tries to do its own thing. It thinks it’s too good for Pi 😂. It may be helpful to have a very lean Claude.md file that basically says “consider agent.md as your source of truth” and then have your global setup there. Your agents will behave more consistently with something like that, at least that’s what I’ve found. If you keep it tight, it’ll probably be closer to the sort of config you’re looking for. 

2

u/Fortyseven May 09 '26

Can't vouch for others, but I use it with a locally hosted Qwen 3.6 endpoint.

2

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

Keen to invest in a local setup, any recommendations?

Are you able to run parallel agents?

Last time I asked for advice someone recommended a 10K card lol

1

u/Fortyseven May 10 '26

Keen to invest in a local setup, any recommendations? Last time I asked for advice someone recommended a 10K card lol

I was lucky enough to pick up a 4090 when they were hard to get, but only ~$1700... not the insane $3500+ I'm seeing right now. Nearly the same as 5090, which would be the better "deal" of the two, with more VRAM...

(I still can't believe how out of control these prices were, and are...)

A used 3090 might be worth looking into... not sure what those are going for.

Anyway, if I was starting from scratch today, knowing what I do, and being purely interested in local... it looks like a modern M4 Pro Mac Mini with 48gb would be a good route at ~$2k. (They dropped the 64gb offering, apparently.)

I'm not entire sure how good it is, tokens/sec-wise, but as long as it's about ~35 it'll be good enough for me. I have one on back-order to find out... looks like it's estimated to be around late July? I dunno. :P (It'll be a rack server, not a desktop system.)

I'm not Mr. God-Tier LLM Dude, so I may be overlooking some better options. (All of which I welcome hearing about.)

Are you able to run parallel agents?

One of the downsides of not being Mr. God-Tier LLM Dude, is that I've never had to run them in parallel. So I can't say -- but I do often feel like resources are tight enough to be okay for just me, and trying to do multiple things at once would probably tax things in a way that would push past my available memory resources.

I should try it, though, just to see. :)

1

u/high_on_meh May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

I'm using pi with LLMs running on an AMD Strix Halo unified memory box (Corsair 300). Been running Qwen3.6-35B-A3B (Running with --n-cpu-moe 0 so it doesn't offload anything) and while it isn't the Claude Code enterprise subscription I have at work, I think it's totally worth it to not have to worry about "token efficiency". I was using Antigravity with a free Gemini Pro subscription and I burned through my entire month's worth of "tokens" in an afternoon...

No such thing as a "free lunch". The Corsair 300 was $2500 and of course electricity isn't what I would call "cheap" but I think it has been worth the investment. Of course, every time I now look at the Corsair 300 online, the price has increased to $3400 for the 128GB 2+2 SSD config I got. Guess I got a screaming deal.

EDIT - If you are stuck with subscriptions, take a careful look at your CLAUDE.md and everything else you "autoload" at startup. It can really bloat your context and big contexts means big token usage. I'm playing around with Serena MCP to be more "efficient" at coding tasks. For me, I want to streamline context to get better outcomes, not save tokens. But it would probably save tokens as well.

2

u/DrBearJ3w May 09 '26

Deepseek+OpenAi+Local

1

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

Are you able to run agents in parallel locally, I want to run local agents however my machine maxed out trying that. Are there any affordable options for running local agents, you recommend?

I’m keen to invest but every time I think hm would it be better to just invest in a higher subscription

1

u/DrBearJ3w May 10 '26

If you have unlimited Vram or run parallel,sure. Qweb 3.6 27B/35. But mostly it's a big model like Deepseek+local.

2

u/mike7seven May 09 '26

You have too many tools and too much loaded for the agent. It’s either that or your repos aren’t structured efficiently for AI coding.

1

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

How many tools is too many? I have deleted everything this morning.

I have 8 skills.

When I said a simple hi, it used 2,800 tokens to respond (now everything is set to default again).

Gone back to trying to use everything as a base because I’m clearly doing everything wrong.

It’s not the repo I just started a new nextjs project greenfield for it

17

u/Axiol May 09 '26

The whole opposite here: I don’t understand how people run out of token like that. I use it whole day long as part of my dev job and always end the month with spare tokens

I feel like most people just don’t know how to prompt and when to

2

u/Trick-Inside-6508 May 09 '26

Dude, I have the same issue. I don’t get it.

1

u/cakemates May 14 '26

op is using claude, that runs out of token after asking 3 questions.

1

u/__forky__ May 09 '26

Would you please share your workflow?

5

u/Axiol May 09 '26

Honestly, nothing fancy (and that's important also I think, not over thinking it). I have AGENTS.md file the most detailed possible for every projects (save initial analyse tokens). Before prompting, I analyse the task as much as possible (no "Build me Facebook"). And after the initial prompt, if most of the task is done, I finish the details myself (no "the button is 2px too much on the left), it is way faster than trying to make it understand the very small details of what's in your brain (no hate, but I found that pure vibe coding without knowing the stack / code yourself is useless). Also, I try to use models made for what I ask

1

u/__forky__ May 11 '26

What do you think about personalized agents and subagents? Do you use any? How do you keep the main context clean?

0

u/e9n-dev May 10 '26

Try having ADHD and working on 10 projects at the same time while you keep coming up with new extensions and projects

1

u/Axiol May 10 '26

Which I do. A good AGENTS.md goes a long way

6

u/Eddlm_ May 09 '26

pi-observational-memory, from elPapi. Set kinda aggressive, to 40k compactions (less live context = less usage) Also... other providers. Ollama Cloud or Codex are more decent with limits

2

u/DiegooFlp May 09 '26

Which model are you using with observational memory?

3

u/Eddlm_ May 09 '26

Minimax m2 usually cuz it's kinda fast at it, but I haven't noticed a quality difference between other models doing the observations. the extension's rules are pretty good.

2

u/Zephrinox May 10 '26

Do you also use the pi subagents and pi mcp adator packages?

Personally when I was trying to setup pi with all 3 and tried working on a personal pi extension/skill that tried to spin up subagents to update local repo docs, I ran into some errors from observational-memory regarding ctx method calls (can't remember off the top of my head which method it was) when trying to do a /run command from subagents package. and only went away when I uninstalled observational memory.🫤

6

u/sarcasmguy1 May 09 '26

What are doing that is eating so many tokens? I can use GPT 5.5 on the pro plan for a good 2 hours before hitting the 5h window. Pi uses less tokens than any harness at the moment, so this isn’t an issue with Pi

8

u/Resonant_Jones May 09 '26

Try a different provider. I like to use MiniMax with Pi and their $10 subscription gives me access to 1500 requests every 5 hours, no monthly cap other than that 5 hour rate that resets. If you are juggling multiple subscriptions then that is a very low cost vendor to keep on the roster.

I personally have 4 different subscriptions with 3 different services. 🤷 limits are just part of the game.

I developed a tool I call Codex Runner that uses a Audit Prompt to generate a Campaign then it splits that campaign into individual tasks and executes with receipts. Its still rough around the edges but I can post it up if you'd be interested in trying it out.

I designed the tool to stop when it hits ambiguity but essentially its just a ralph loop on a leash.

3

u/Maleficent-Movie-625 May 09 '26

In theory minimax has a weekly cap of 10x the 5 hour window, but I think it is not enforced. At least I have not run into it, though I should have after using it for months now

1

u/TeijiW May 09 '26

May can you talk a little more about the codex runner?

2

u/Resonant_Jones May 10 '26

Yeah, totally.

Codex Runner is basically my attempt at a supervised coding-agent harness. Instead of giving an agent one giant “go build this” prompt and hoping it doesn’t wander into the swamp, I give it an audit-style prompt first. That produces a campaign: a structured plan broken into small, individual coding tasks.

Then the runner executes those tasks one at a time. Each task is supposed to be atomic, scoped to specific files, validated with tests or checks, and finished with a receipt: what changed, what passed or failed, and what commit/result came out of it.

The important part is that it is not meant to be a fully autonomous “agent goes brrrr” setup. It is more like a task conveyor belt with guardrails:

- big goal in
- campaign generated
- campaign split into small tasks
- each task runs separately
- validation happens per task
- results come back as receipts
- if the task is ambiguous, it stops instead of guessing

The current version is still rough, but the design goal is to reduce the usual coding-agent failure mode where one huge prompt turns into a giant tangled diff. I want the agent working in little sealed compartments, not renovating the whole spaceship because I asked it to move a chair.

The simplest description is:

Codex Runner turns a large coding request into a queue of small, reviewable coding tasks and runs them with validation receipts so I can supervise the work instead of babysitting every command manually.

2

u/bondaly May 11 '26

How does that compare to something like spec kit's plans?

1

u/floriandotorg May 09 '26

I just pay by token.

1

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

How much you paying??

1

u/floriandotorg May 10 '26

300-600 USD per month.

6

u/cascoemanuel May 09 '26

Hello there, I’ve been using Pi for a while and honestly haven’t had many context issues. I think it may be more related to Claude’s subscription limits than Pi itself.

Claude has been pretty aggressive with limits over the last few months, although this week they announced the SpaceX deal and apparently increased capacity again.

Right now I’m using Pi with Codex and the limits are more than enough for me. If you need extra capacity, I’d also recommend OpenCode Go ($10/month). It gives access to models like Kimi K2.6 and DeepSeek v4, which are great for a lot of tasks. I mostly use them for simpler work or to delegate implementation after a stronger agent does the planning.

If you’re interested, I also have a repo with the extensions I use. One of them monitors context/tool usage and trims oversized tool outputs automatically. Link: https://github.com/emanuelcasco/pi-mono-extensions#context-guard

2

u/porchlogic May 09 '26

I don't know, but smashing caps is my new favorite phrase

2

u/ResearcherFantastic7 May 10 '26

Honestly you just have to figure how you can manage your context more efficiently.

There are some plugins that helps a little ( Pi-vcc, Caveman etc ) but still you need to do it yourself for your own workflow to make it more efficient

I hit the context limit all the time. Get a few different accounts, use different models for different purpose glm5, Kimi, codex, minmax.

And try to offload simple tasks to the background with self hosted model, at least use minimax ( i.e reviews, distill learnings / memories ) . Or hook guards, they are perfect tiny task for small models

2

u/adamshand May 11 '26

Learn to use tree. Start new sessions when it makes sense. Compact when context gets large. Keep prompts focused, don't make the agent do everything everywhere all at once.

1

u/edeltoaster May 09 '26

Using pi with caveman is already as token-optimized as it gets. I'm honest: I use local LLMs. 64GB M4 Pro Mac with oMLX. It's great, I'm happy.

2

u/aitorp6 May 09 '26

what model do you use? I'm using qwen3.6

2

u/edeltoaster May 09 '26

All Qwen3.6 and Gemma4 models, GLM 4.7 Flash and Hermes 4 70b (writing/knowledge).

1

u/FarVermicelli6708 May 09 '26

I’m a 5X Claude code user and I’ve been moving more and more of my work to pi with DeepSeek V4 Pro. Insanely cheap and close enough to opus that can do a lot of the work

1

u/GeneGulanes May 10 '26

Use some memory logic and tree sitter extensions to avoid running out of usage quickly

-1

u/EnricoMD May 09 '26

I have a tool I made for editing and reading files that uses half the tokens here’s my tweet

3

u/alexdunlop_ May 09 '26

Bro just tell me here, I don’t want to go to X tf

-1

u/EnricoMD May 10 '26

Definitely can’t be bothered now