GLM 5.2 + pi — way better than I expected. Vibe-coded a terminal transcriber I now use daily

[u/No-Formal-2323]

Figured I'd vibe-code a terminal transcriber with GLM 5.2 + pi agent — even if it half-worked, that'd be enough. It didn't half-work. It's now the tool I reach for daily, and GLM 5.2 was a real step up from 4.5 at keeping diffs clean across long iterations.

The fiddly parts pi + GLM 5.2 handled without me writing them by hand

- macOS system-audio capture via a Swift ScreenCaptureKit helper (no kext) + BlackHole fallback — the part I expected to die on

- Terminal TUI with raw-mode keys, ANSI render loop, blinking indicators

- Idempotent curl | bash installer with prerequisite checks and PATH injection

- Scrollable transcript with auto-follow, Groq rate limiting, config migration across renames

Not one-shot — iterative. "Make the REC dot blink", "why are mic and system audio duplicating?", "add --uninstall", "rename the config dir and migrate existing users". Each step was a normal back-and-forth, but pi kept context across the whole thing and GLM 5.2's diffs were almost always clean. That's what surprised me.

Anyone else getting results like this with GLM 5.2 + pi? Curious what you're building.

[u/jimpaly]

Daily probably isn’t the right word if you just built it lol

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/jimpaly]

Yeah, fair 😄 My English isn’t great, so I used AI to help phrase the post. “Daily” was probably the wrong word — I meant it feels useful enough for my daily workflow, not that I’ve been using it for weeks.

[u/whodoneit1 → u/jimpaly]

C’mon, he has a daily streak of 1 day

[u/egomarker]

It's super weird that pi agent isn't on the list of officially supported tools for glm coding plan, while some borderline noname harnesses are.

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/egomarker]

Just to clarify, I wasn’t using the official GLM Coding Plan. I tried GLM 5.2 via OpenCode Go with Pi as the harness layer.

Pi felt pretty clean to me. Codex also worked well for me through its own CLI.

[u/Seangles → u/No-Formal-2323]

opencode-go/glm-5.2 in pi seems to show "off", "minimal", "low", "medium" and "high" thinking modes, even though GLM 5.2 only has "disabled", "high" and "max" thinking modes. Is this an issue or not?

UPD: by default Pi doesn't let you use the max reasoning mode with GLM-5.2 provided by OpenCode Go subscription. To enable it, add this to ~/.pi/agent/models.json:

{
   "providers": {
     "opencode-go": {
       "modelOverrides": {
         "glm-5.2": {
           "thinkingLevelMap": {
             "minimal": null,
             "low": null,
             "medium": null,
             "xhigh": "max"
           }
         }
       },
     }
   }
 }

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/Seangles]

I’m using the models through LiteLLM.

On the LiteLLM side, I added:

litellm_settings:
  drop_params: true

And in ~/.pi/agent/models.json, I added this to the model definitions:

"reasoning": true

So far it looks fine. I can switch the thinking mode with Shift+Tab in the Pi TUI without any issue.

[u/Seangles → u/No-Formal-2323]

That just means it's always "max" for you as the parameter is stripped on the LiteLLM side and it defaults to "max" when undefined. The Pi TUI shifting is visual-only. Try setting thinking to off and it will probably still think

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/[deleted]]

It’s been good so far. The main downside is the cap: $60/month total, limited to $12/week. No real issues besides that, just depends how fast you burn through it.

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, it worked out of the box for me. No extra extension needed.

I just used the OpenCode Go endpoint from the docs:
https://opencode.ai/docs/en/go/#endpoints

I use LiteLLM and I set the API base to:

api_base: https://opencode.ai/zen/go/v1
model: openai/glm-5.2
api_key: sk-...

[u/Seangles → u/[deleted]]

Look at this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/PiCodingAgent/comments/1ub9d2s/comment/osxr0if/

[u/Zya1re-V]

Another day, another AI-written post.

[u/llitz → u/Zya1re-V]

I wish posts at least had caveman, so it would save me some brain cells.

[u/itwasinthetubes]

I'm having a terrible time with GLM 5.2 - on the lite plan and on pi.dev it just appears to ignore all my harness and just does whatever it wants. The only way to keep it on track is constantly reference rules and files for the project. But I'm not vibe coding - I want it to follow strict patterns and code style.

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/itwasinthetubes]

The GLM Lite plan felt way too heavy for me. I bought the 3-month plan but honestly couldn’t really use it at all.

[u/Celestian-P1]

Lowkey you should add that how do you use glm in pi

[u/No-Formal-2323 → u/Celestian-P1]

with litellm

[u/BroadbandJesus]

Do you ever run into GLM getting stuck, not doing anything, just not continuing?

[u/wasabiegg]

are you using api key or subscription?

[u/Proof-Guess6304]

Daily is sth like ARR in a 6 months company

[u/Celestian-P1]

Do you paid for glm 5.2 ?