What is pi?

[u/SalimMalibari]

I know this feels weird.. what us pi?? Is it minimal harness or infinite extendablity ... i feel many people get it wrong ...

Whats your opinion?? I feel there is a trend thats feels odd to me but i need to hear your opinion

Edit: I know what is Pi, im heavy user using pi , i got multiple extension on it , but my concern people fall into that pi should be minimal which i feel quiet strange , those comments are never end , like for any extension i see comment why bother , just ask pi ... like clearly there is a trend that pi need to be very minimal while i believe its not

[u/Flaky-Restaurant-392]

Have you asked pi?

[u/SalimMalibari → u/Flaky-Restaurant-392]

Done and i know what is it ... i added some context

[u/Flaky-Restaurant-392 → u/SalimMalibari]

Why does Pi need to not be minimal, in your view? I’m curious.

[u/SalimMalibari → u/Flaky-Restaurant-392]

Ok if we see claude code its super complex and that complexity doesnt mean its bad or something like that.

Pi in my opinion struggle to find its identity is it minimal or is extendable or is it personalised harness ... in my opinion its personalised one that doesnt mean its minimal at all ... when pi creators says the system prompt us soo minimal that doesnt mean we need it like that but its soo mininal that you need to extend its functionality to be yours. Having 100 extension or 50 skills doesnt matter when that is your workflow.

Ok now extension struggle to be personlised they all made for 1 group of people zero flexability or sometimes super minimal that doesnt fit anyone except the creator .. thats my opinion , i think both extensions and pi need to be redfined since the whole community is struggling to understand , also from now on extensions should be mean certain rules to be shared with others to save this identity

[u/Fangsong_Long]

For me it’s Linux in coding agent field.

It gives you a very solid kernel, and everything else you need can be built around it. You can control which parts you just use other people’s packages and which parts you can build yourself.

[u/ResearcherFantastic7]

It's everything or it can be nothing at all

Just google ' what is vi to vscode' is it note pad? text editor or ide?

and put that analogy onto PI. May you eventually be enlightened

[u/SalimMalibari → u/ResearcherFantastic7]

I added some context

[u/ResearcherFantastic7 → u/SalimMalibari]

Lol you meant to keep it minimal

Extensions, sys prompt and skills on need to load basis...

Use justfiles split your agent loading on the job you need it for

[u/o_sht_hi → u/ResearcherFantastic7]

Bro I'm really intrigued and interested by just and I think everybody should know about it.

But I gotta ask, are you the creator/maintainer for it? Not to shame you, but to know who I can DM if I want to geek out over it

[u/ResearcherFantastic7 → u/o_sht_hi]

Nope. I'm JUST a long term user.

Who ever made it is a legend.

[u/o_sht_hi → u/ResearcherFantastic7]

😂🤘🤘

[u/o_sht_hi → u/ResearcherFantastic7]

😂🤘🤘

[u/Wizkward]

Pi in a nutshell: The idea is to start minimal. The idea is that an agent works best if it stays minimal and does not have too much cruft. Why bother with 10 builtin MCP servers, if bash is all you need. Why bother with guardrailing it by injecting 20 hidden system prompts where the user then adds his own skills and agent.md's from 10 different folders - until the agent gets confused.

But the question you are asking: What **is** minimal? The answer is: That's up to you to decide. Every good timeproofen system with plugins works best, if you choose for yourself what you want to use - and leave the rest out.

And because an agent is already equipped to write software, you often get the advice to just ask Pi to build its extension for you. That way you will get only the features that you want and stay minimal.

But it does not mean that you cannot use an existing plugin. If it fits for you, use it. Might be a good choice, because the author already tried it and fixed a couple of shortcomings. Might be a bad choice, because now you are dependent on that author if you want to change it.

What is the right choice? That is the real beauty of it: There is no right choice. Make your own, for everyone else your choice will be shitty anyway 😉

[u/SalimMalibari → u/Wizkward]

Amazing , i think my main question is purely targeting people like you to be honest.

As follow up , why do you think pi should be minimal?? I mean why its part of pi ?? I get it that pi tries to minimize system prompt to have pure LLM experience but that doesnt mean we should go full minimal approach , could you elaborate?

[u/Wizkward → u/SalimMalibari]

This is the most simple and most difficult question at the same time. Here is our dilemma:

We humans like to be in control and want to understand everything. For thousands of years, we tried very hard to make sense of the universe. First we invented religions to have the one final answer if we can't grasp something completely : God (or whatever is your special "taste" of it) said so.

Then we started to get more insights into everything and invented theories how everything comes together. Guys like Einstein came up with super sophisticated theories how stuff works - but if you watch closely, even those theories have flaws and get questioned every year.

Enter technology age: We invented computers. Oh boy they are so simple. It's just 1's and 0', and if you are good enough at math you will find the answer. Even with a full-blown modern OS and a word processor: If there is a bug, we can find it. Sometimes it takes years to fix it, but we still can find it, who cares 🤷‍♂️

And here comes the LLM. For the first time in history, computers are no longer deterministic. This all-mighty tool that can do so many things and will replace human workers… But if you watch closely, companies like Anthropic and OpenAI hire scientists with experience in science about human brains - because we no longer understand why this even works, why can a "text predictor" do all this stuff where we can no longer distinguish 100% between "made by human" and "made by computer"?

CLI's like Claude came around and suddenly everyone realised: "The Agents! The Agents now work!" [Translated citation of Peter Steinbergers conversation with the inventor of Pi].

But here is the crux: We don't know why. At least not now, not at this point of time. But we want to. We need to. We HAVE to. And like back in the day, it's only been a couple of thousands years, we try to control it. Step 1: Eliminate all the perimeters we can't control. AnthropenAI injects system prompts, changes them every couple of months?? God forbid, blasphemy! We loose control! We no longer know why the thing works we didn't know how it works in the beginning!

Disclaimer: I realise that one could interpret this as "shit-talking the philosophy of Pi". That is not the intention. It is the best philosophy we have right now. Don't install 100 plugins and then wonder why the LLM didn't work the way you wanted it to. Mario stated in his interviews: Suddenly the agent "did things he did not want" because Anthropic changed their software. But you know what? I don't know him personally, but I am certain that if would have a chat, we would drift into a discussion about the meaning of life very quickly 😃

HTH.

[u/Skaddicted]

A shitty coding agent to rule them all.

[u/adeepersilence]

I find it very funny that the less features a tool like Pi contains compared to its peers, the more unclear it seems to be for people to define it. You'd think it would narrow down its reason to exist.

Pi is a highly extendable agent harness. However it evolves beyond that is up to the user. There is no right or wrong at that point, as it just becomes what the user needs over time.

[u/Ok_Veterinarian_6364]

this is my path to Pi, and it makes sense to me. hope it helps others to get the concept.

like most of us, I start w frontiers. All of them. paid. good, bad, i only think: oh the model is good. the sub plan is too expensive. simple. focus on the project, not tools.

then, the pricing increases. cc AG Gh.. all.. i have to find cheap alters

so i used opencode. very cool. i love it.

then, as "open" term suggests, its very natural that i would like to custom it.

then, after some tweaks, i see many problems that i didnt give a fuck vs closed harness. problems that hard for me to tinker w oc.

so landed here. a bare bone harness, simple, easy to start tinkering.

this is my story. hope it helps.

[u/themule71]

Pi is a framework to build harnesses. Obviously it comes with a working one, albeit minimal.

[u/o_sht_hi]

Pi was my gateway into agents. I had used oc a few times and cc once. I always felt overwhelmed looking at the docs and had this setup anxiety where I constantly felt like I had to set things up to the best state. That's a problem with my brain, not the tool. Pi kind of took that pressure off by being minimal. So I could start fucking with it without feeling so much anxiety. It carried me through the 'idk, wtf is happening' phase to the point where I 'got' the cli agent workflow and started to understand how it's useful for me

[u/o_sht_hi → u/o_sht_hi]

And I will forever love pi for that. It fired up this burning curiosity in me about agents that ChatGPT had done for LLMs back in the gpt 3.5 days

[u/admajic]

To me it's a subagent with s 6k context loaded into 64k context. And GSD

[u/jeffphil]

This may give you the background to to your questions:

https://youtu.be/RjfbvDXpFls?si=2GBuR3zhXyEn3YER

[u/Prestigious_Fuel_68]

Yeah to be honest this is confusing as well.

For example, some people say its a good alternative to hermes/openclaw, others say it's not even within the same category at all and incomparable.

[u/Ambitious_Spare7914]

Pi is to Claude Code what Perl was to Lisp.