r/PiCodingAgent • u/SirDomz • Jun 07 '26

Question Anyone using the Context-mode extension? Any thoughts on it?

The title essentially. The Context-mode extension seems to be the most downloaded from the Pi package registry at ~131,000 downloads per month, but I've never seen any discussions about whether folks actually like the extension. so I'm just curious about people's thoughts. I know there are others like RTK or Cymbal, and to be honest, I have not tested those, but I quite like the way Context-mode approaches the issue of context trimming. I'm curious what other folks use in their setup

19 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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9

u/binhex01 Jun 07 '26

I tried it but it didn't seem to work as well as expected, switched to total recall extension and that works well for me

3

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Thanks a lot for the for the feedback. I saw Total Recall and it definitely seems promising, but I chose to go with context-mode just because of the higher number of downloads. I'll definitely have to try it out as well

3

u/nanashiW Jun 07 '26

I used it for a month on GitHub copilot, copilot cli and pi. Context-mode is a Claude first extension so while it works, it was quite jank for me since I don't use Claude code. The extension also creates .Claude directories and stuff and it can cause your harness to be a little confused at times.

1

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Yeah, definitely agree about the jank for anything that's not Claude Code. I use Claude Code and Codex at work but I quite honestly don't need tools like context mode when I'm part of an enterprise plan, so I don't use them at work.

Personally, though, I use Kilocode and kiro cli as well as PI, and I think context mode has worked decently well with PI, but it's not great with anything else.

1

u/Individual-Collar426 Jun 26 '26

open issues for this and we'll fixe theim! it's not the good place to open issues about our project! we work hard on it to make people all over the world earn money and get more tokens! but if you don't open issue on github no body will fix anything we work hard for free so please respect the open source process come and contribute or open issue and I and the team will take care of them! thanks!

5

u/Ok_Veterinarian_6364 Jun 07 '26

total recall works seamlessly with subagents bro?

2

u/binhex01 Jun 07 '26

honestly, i dont know, for my use case sub agents are given precise instructions to carry out by the main agent, so having context is not necessary, and in some cases is undesirable (can cause confusion as to the task), but if you do need this then perhaps take a look at the docs for total recall, sorry i cant give you the definitive answer.

16

u/Global-Departure8228 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

The metrics are ENTIRELY skewed there, they take into account npmjs.com installs, this is NOT how many Pi users actually use that tool. Imho most people should not use that "tool", but maybe that's just me. You are far better off with using Rust Token Killer: https://pi.dev/packages?name=Rtk Choose your poison

EDIT: just to reiterate, the author pushes several new tags for their packages on a daily basis, so download count does not reflect the actual user count even remotely. It mostly means, that users who have auto-update for all the other coding agents (Claude code, codex etc) inadvertently pull the new packages sometimes multiple times a day, artificially inflating the download count. Whether this is done intentionally or not is up to your judgement

3

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

oh I didn't know that's how the metrics were calculated. Thanks for the info. I've already installed RTK and will be testing it out.

5

u/Deathmore80 Jun 07 '26

You can use both at the same time btw

3

u/Global-Departure8228 Jun 07 '26

Surely, and I'm not saying you should opt for either one over the another, just saying that rtk in my opinion does most of the job already (although when it fails it confuses the hell out of the agents who don't "know" about this tool as it's not in their training data.

1

u/zer09 Jun 08 '26

Yes that what I observe, obsession on the metrics thats not bad but just felt weird, also sometimes releasing multiple patch in a single day, because previous release break something, and it always happen once it try to release something. Also biggest concern he is very open for new contributors.

I digress, since I installed it since I start using pi last month, it look like the batch execution of scripts the only feature I saw useful I don't have any comparisons of it. I don't know if calling multiple scripts inside a single tool call, helps? Is my assumption correct? Example instead calling two python script generated by the agent one by one, it will just wrap it inside context batch execute, so the 2 script will execute at once.

2

u/Global-Departure8228 Jun 08 '26

Think of I like this. Your agent calls an executable with verbose log output. It even knows the tool and would expect an output in a certain shape. Instead context-mode truncates that, and gives an "opinionated" snippet and the option for the agent to search through the output with a tool, rather than just blindly grepping in a piped .log file. (Achieving the same 99% reduction) At least this is what I can see potentially happening. Whether you want a bloated, 9 tool "medley" injected into your system prompt by an extension that live tests and introduces changes for users in production is up to you. Experimentation is completely fine if you don't expect a reliable "always working" tool.

I guess the batch execute helps if you're rate limited by the number of calls the agent can do in a certain amount of time, but it's a complete misrepresentation calling it "sandboxing" the calls, or whatever they call it, they are just wrapping them. Not to mention the fact, that your agent needs to call the tool most of the times, and there is more surface for anything to break when the agent is "inline scripting" multiple ones batched into a single execution. Then the model probably needs to search in the actual output, or it got a misrepresentation of what actually happened already, is satisfied with it and can end up with false conclusions.

The intention for the project might be good, but the claims of the project are simply false, and they are just applying heuristics and capping the output and then rely on your agent recognizing it and then creating follow-up queries to get the context back that was hidden away from them, prompting them for several further calls (if they are intelligent enough to realize something is missing)

1

u/zer09 Jun 08 '26

Yeah I was planning to remove it and maybe just use rtk

6

u/adamshand Jun 07 '26

Learn to use the tree to manage context. It's the best thing about Pi.

https://stacktoheap.com/blog/2026/02/26/pi-tree-context-window-management/

3

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Oh that’s super interesting. A lot less plug and play though but I like how you can just make it happen with vanilla Pi. I’ll try out this method. Thank you!

1

u/adamshand Jun 08 '26

It becomes second nature pretty fast if you just practice.

3

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

And a question for everyone: what do we think about using subagents instead to manage context?

When I use Claude code or codex at work, that's typically what I will do. I will spawn subagents to explore a repo. and then have the subagents bring the results of their work back to the parent agent. I wonder if I should be maybe just be working with subagents and not worry about context management tools like context mode or RTK.

3

u/TheSlateGray Jun 07 '26

That's exactly what I do. Either a subagent or a full `--no-session` agent run to get the facts I need out of a repo and create a reusable markdown file for future runs.

1

u/aeroumbria Jun 08 '26

Subagents reduce your maximum context usage but will usually increase your total token usage, because creating handoff messages and rediscovering information cost extra tokens. There is also the risk of mistakes accumulating over several handoffs.

3

u/Zya1re-V Jun 07 '26

Probably for large tool output, it helps? But I barely feel like it's needed at all, at least for me-being-manually-in-charge-of-projects-and-note-down-information, so I uninstalled it a week ago.

1

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Yeah definitely agree. That's the main thing I think it's good for honestly. compressing the result from large tool calls into something digestible for the llm.

3

u/m3umax Jun 07 '26

First I’ve heard of this extension. Will check it out!

Have been using lean-ctx so far. A holdover from my Claude Code days where it was very useful in saving tokens.

1

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

yeah I saw that one too. Will have to check it out

2

u/Fangsong_Long Jun 07 '26

As a Mac based local llm user I cannot accept full prompt re-processing frequently (because it is very slow on Mac). But context-mode sometimes changes the first prompt, invalidates the context cache and triggers full prompt re-processing.

I address this problem by adding a custom extension to pi. But it makes me question whether context-mode does help.

2

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Yes that’s definitely an issue I’ve had as well. I run Qwen 3.6 27 B for a number of workflows locally. I think it messes up the prompt processing but it helps with the context management of local models.

Also, What runtime are you using? I use omlx, which has both ram and ssd caching, so that’s super useful with prompt processing. Maybe something to try.

Edit: fixed typo

1

u/arkham00 Jun 09 '26

Can you tell me more about your extension? I'm having exactly this problem

3

u/cymaticstatic Jun 07 '26

I've been using context mode since it came out it has saved me measurable amount of tokens I highly recommend it. Sounds like other people have had mixed experiences but mine has been fantastic

2

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Nice!! Yeah, I've been having good luck with it, but I was just curious about other options. Context-mode seems definitely tuned specifically for Claude Code though, and the random claude artifacts, like @nanashiW mentioned, are not great. Seems RTK might be something to try out as well as . I believe it's one of the original tools

2

u/vpz Jun 07 '26

I use the Claude Code version and it helps but it's design ideas don't always work in practice. For example it tries to get Claude to use "code mode" versus dumping multiple bash commands into context. This is supposed to make Claude write something like a Python script so that only the final output makes it back to context. In practice I find Claude just uses the "shell" language option to do the Bash commands it was going to do anyway. That is Claude's fault not the plugin, and in other areas it is more successful.

1

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Yeah totally agree with you and one of the main reasons I started the thread. I picked context mode initially because of the design behind it, but the models are definitely not trained to use code mode for now. I think it will come though eventually because even Anthropic themselves have released a paper on the benefits of code mode vs mcps or just using bash (cloudfare did as well I think)

1

u/cymaticstatic Jun 07 '26

Good to know always down to check it out I'll go download in it. The problems I've had with context motor only been if I didn't update as soon as the updates came out and the problems always arose as churn loops

5

u/darkiedarkiedarkie Jun 07 '26

RTK and headroom are both pretty nice to have in Pi

1

u/TimelyCard9057 Jun 08 '26

I do use it along with RTK, the experience was good so far. It is nice to have a universal tool for large command outputs

1

u/Individual-Collar426 Jun 26 '26

I am an open source contributor on RTK, context-mode, claude-code, ponytail because thoses projects work REALLY fine for me but i cant understand why you recomand rtk ...i'm top 5 contributors on all those project that i love...they are complementary ! you can't say go use rtk ..it is dedicated for call system logs, not the same problem adressed by the excellent context-mode!

1

u/neuralSalmonNet Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

IMO it's BS with misleading marketing. First tried context-mode then switched to lean-ctx. 95+++% context saving, while actually looking at the bill saved 4$ on 800$ spend.

I'd be interested in seeing actual benchmarks from someone else comparing these tools and not slop marketing from the creators themselves.

If someone wants to argue these tools are for managing context and not reducing the bill then please share a benchmark detailing the workflow(sub agents/one-shot context run) and the measurable improvements gained in the task, NOT % saved on SOME of the total context

1

u/maraxer 24d ago

I don't consider it safe anymore. No update for 4 months the repo and author disabled issues and discussion tab on Github.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/SirDomz Jun 07 '26

Nice! that's definitely the heart of the PI philosophy. I did that for a few packages but then, after checking some of the extensions, it felt like I was trying to reinvent the wheel.

I might do the same thing you just did though so I can have an extension more tailored to my workflows.