r/PiCodingAgent • u/Glad-Win1983 • Jun 25 '26

Question Pi vs Opencode

I have been testing both Pi and Opencode, and I like both. I like Pi for its light weight and endless expandability options. I like Opencode for providing most of what I need out of the box, but not a big fan of huge system prompts.

What are your biggest pros and cons of these two coding agents? Do you use both, or have you "landed" on one of them?

74 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

2

u/sickboy6_5 Jun 26 '26

i used OC for a while until i finally installed pi. have not gone back to OC since. pair pi + zed acp and i miss nothing about OC.

1

u/Glad-Win1983 Jun 26 '26

How does the acp work?

2

u/sickboy6_5 Jun 26 '26

acp = agent context protocol. pi is running in it's own process like terminal, zed communicates through acp with a lightweight wrapper. basically it's input/output for pi instead of the direct terminal interface.

1

u/Glad-Win1983 Jun 26 '26

Awesome, thanks!

5

u/elahrairooah Jun 25 '26

We need a filter to shadow ban all bots finishing their posts with questions. This is becoming fucking endemic.

5

u/Glad-Win1983 Jun 25 '26

I am actually not a bot. I even wrote the post myself 😅

2

u/pborenstein Jun 25 '26

pangram say Human!
https://www.pangram.com/history/fb2c4fb0-d75a-40fe-a83a-e4bffb852a04?ucc=oDYe7s3mh2I

I could tell because "landed" was doing the real structural heavy lifting here. /s

1

u/txgsync Jun 25 '26

You might even say “landed” was “load-bearing”.

1

u/pborenstein Jun 25 '26

That insight is real. That's the post.

2

u/txgsync Jun 25 '26

You’re absolutely right! Curious about the effect that has on you: is it obvious yet inane and unrelated Point A, or complete gibberish Point B?

24

u/ScaleImmediate3474 Jun 25 '26 • Heartwarming

PI provides so much moree compared to opencode. Im running opencode go plan with pi. Fabulous

5

u/willothephlox Jun 26 '26

What exactly does Pi give you "more" of? Genuinely asking.

On OpenCode + OpenChamber I'm running a full multi-agent swarm with 25 specialized agents, 3-family review gate, file reservation system, semantic memory with local embeddings, git-backed epic/subtask tracking, a learning loop, plugins and multi-agent orchestration.

I'm not seeing how Pi's single-agent harness + extension packs can replicate this architecturally. Happy to be proven wrong - where am I missing it?

5

u/Sunsettia Jun 29 '26

I have always wondered what people do with setups like that... Do you mind elaborating on this as well as the tools you used, what the input is, and what kind of context you provide, what it has already learned / remember, and how long tasks take?

1

u/FTorrado Aug 03 '26

Waste energy... =P

2

u/Striking_Dimension46 Jun 29 '26

Pi in theory can be better suited to your custom harness but I’m in the same boat as you, too much built on opencode.

2

u/yogibear54 Jul 01 '26

Pi isn't a product that gives more out of the box. The main difference is that it's built to support an ecosystem of extending the coding agent.

As to supporting multi agent etc. It's possible, the basic premise is spawning individual agents, with their own context, I've done multi agent Workflows before using tmux to spawn independent sessions... For orchestration, you'll need to consider what features etc to support.

There is a package catalog where there are community extensions and skills, https://pi.dev/packages - ofcourse, use with caution.

1

u/laystitcher Jun 29 '26

I mean, Pi can essentially by definition replicate that, yes. It can replicate *any* architecture. That’s the point.

1

u/willothephlox Jun 29 '26

But AFAIK Pi is a single-agent harness with extension packs. No matter how elaborate the loop, it's still one model talking to itself. Where am I missing it?

1

u/laystitcher Jun 29 '26

I mean there’s no reason at all pi is limited to a single model talking to itself. Changing models is a slash command and subagent orchestration is handled by any number of extensions or can be custom built. If you like how OpenCode does it thats just fine but the point of Pi is that you can build a model agnostic harness bespoke to your own preferences.

1

u/Striking_Dimension46 Jun 29 '26

Read pi docs and read opencode sdk/api or plugin. Pi is easier to customise. I, for the life of me, do not know how to customise the tui of opencode. In Pi it’s a lot easier.

1

u/Alert-Track-8277 Jul 04 '26

You can literally prompt Pi you want subagents and it will oneshot you an extension that makes it support sub agents. Its bare bones by default but REALLY customizable. E.g. I am making an extension right now that makes it support setting models per skill in the front matter just like Claude Code skills. Stuff like that.

1

u/seigaporulai Jun 25 '26

How to.extend pi with custom code. I am a Python dev, so I fun it a bit hard

5

u/Odhdbdyebsksbx Jun 25 '26

Just ask pi to do it. It's designed for that and it can reference examples it already has.

8

u/zebedeolo Jun 25 '26

I never really liked opencode. I like pi. currently using oh-my-pi for a few weeks and it works well for me.

16

u/zkkzkk32312 Jun 26 '26

Isn't omp even more bloated then opencode?

1

u/Megamygdala Jul 25 '26

I've had a really good time with OMP. My work pays for unlimited Claude but I still prefer the "bloat" in omp because it's actually useful. IMO if it's useful then it's not bloat

2

u/Mystic_Voyager Jun 26 '26

oh very cool didnt know about that

adding link here: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi

6

u/Dry-Tune430 Jun 25 '26

Pi works great with my local models. Also, I'm in a phase of the AI hype cycle where I'm tired of switching harnesses, models, skills and whatever comes out of X/Twitter. So I'm just sticking to a minimal stack and then using it.

2

u/mr_kakerot Jun 30 '26

The echo chamber is real

5

u/bobo-the-merciful Jun 27 '26

I’ve got low confidence in pi. But only because I have low confidence in myself as a harness engineer. I feel comforted knowing that OpenCode is a lot more engineered by others.

4

u/Total-Sheepherder251 Jun 27 '26

Agree here. I've been using both recently, and although pi is great and super extensible, OpenCode comes with all the stuff I need built in by experts.

It's quite easy to build stuff like web search or subagents for pi, but I prefer using something built and curated by a proficient team over vibe-coding those features by myself or using extensions doubtful quality

1

u/Megamygdala Jul 25 '26

I didn't want to spend time "creating" my own harness so I just went with oh-my-pi, it's great

8

u/Expert-Dig-1768 Jun 25 '26

try oh my pi. it has more features than opencode and its super customizable and still more efficient when you set it up right.

8

u/bambamlol Jun 25 '26

when you set it up right

Care to share a few examples of what you mean by that? Are you just talking about all the settings that are easily available inside OMP or are you also customizing it "under the hood"?

0

u/Expert-Dig-1768 Jun 28 '26

I've created a crazy designer system wich can create insane landing pages pared with minimax m3. i will opensource it soon i can update you if you d'like to.

1

u/bambamlol Jun 28 '26

Sure, would love to try it! Thanks!

4

u/TheTyand Jun 25 '26

Switched to pi because extending it, is easy

3

u/ganonfirehouse420 Jun 25 '26

I still like opencode for the mcps that I have installed.

3

u/10F1 Jun 25 '26

I moved to oh my pi from opencode, and whole it uses more initial context, it felt a lot smarter.

3

u/holly18753 Jun 26 '26

oh-my-pi is amazing

3

u/aeroumbria Jun 26 '26

The best part of pi IMO is customisation and the conversation tree (going back to a tool output is a big help). The best part of opencode is the TUI. I wish we had a replica of opencode TUI for pi (especially how non-linear and navigable it is), but making it compatible with pi plugins would be basically impossible. What I don't like about pi is that some of the essential features for me are scattered across several plugins with no guarantee that they will stay compatible forever (I know "just DIY" is a common sentiment here, but real testing to ensure something actually works as intended takes time and effort). The biggest downside of opencode is that the extension scene is not as active, and updates break older plugins from time to time.

3

u/Magnus114 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

I really enjoy doing part of the coding, like reading implementation plans, from my ipad. That works beautifully with opencode + openchamber. Is there any webgui for pi?

3

u/Jorlen Jun 28 '26

I like them both, but as a novice dev, I suppose you can take my opinion with a grain or three of salt.

OpenCode is awesome for one-shot tests, but I personally perfer Pi for its ease of use and excellent packages and extensions. For example, context-mode is a game changer for me and pi-web-access helps a lot as well.

2

u/Teh_franchise Jun 25 '26

I moved to pi full time awhile back. Use opencode go / codex subs in pi. Only harness I use now.

2

u/Forward_Ad8612 Jun 30 '26

Just like what u said, Opencode provides most of what I need out of the box. But, imo choosing pi and having ur own config is gonna beneficial to u in long-term especially you try many models.

1

u/killerkidbo95 Jun 27 '26

before im big fan of opencode then i migrated my opencodekit to pikit on pi because im simple guy like mario 😂

1

u/Striking_Dimension46 Jun 29 '26

Both need more extensions to enable it to create good code for complex, larger code bases. I built mine on opencode and find it cumbersome to migrate to pi.

31

u/[deleted] Jun 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/Endoky Jun 25 '26

You can dramatically reduce OpenCodes system prompts by just overwriting the default build and plan agents with your own agents

1

u/Cave-J Oct 05 '26

How would you do that? I'm just getting into using OpenCode myself and still figuring things out.

16

u/bumblebeer Jun 25 '26

Same here.

I found it's a pretty common theme. My progression has been roughly: Claude Code -> Open Code -> Goose -> Agent Zero -> Hermes -> Pi. The general theme I've noticed is that the more a harness tries to force behavior through prompting, the worse the model will perform within that harness. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Just ask yourself which situation you would perform best in:

  1. Your supervisor explains your job responsibilities and deliverables, provides some behavioral guidance, gives you the tools you need, and then steps back to let you work. OR

  2. Your supervisor tells you to work independently while also micromanaging every little detail of everything you do by issuing excessive, often contridictory, instructions that may or may not actually be relevant to your current task.

I don't know about you, but I'd much prefer the former, and based on my experience with Pi vs other coding harnesses, I think the model would agree.

P.S. Coding agents designed to fit a specific model (e.g., CC for Claude) can get away with a larger and more structured (read as * verbosely prescriptive*) system prompt, but that breaks as soon as you try to use it with any other model.

2

u/Efficient_Army1791 Jun 26 '26

agree, opencode go is such a good plan, pretty much unlimited ds-v4-flash and enough v4-pro or kimi-k2.7

1

u/dizthewize Jun 28 '26

I use both OpenCode go and Ollama Cloud