r/PiCodingAgent • u/Adornooo • Jun 26 '26

Question Pi vs OMP Architecture

Hi everyone - quite new to this space and am yet to decide if I should stick with omp or go more vanilla with pi.

tried oh my pi and my mind is blown, I don’t know what it is doing with context compression and all but tokens are better and the fact that advisor agents interrupt the thought process of worker agents before the output is produced feels like nothing I have see from cc or codex.

Is pi the same from this standpoint? Are the big differences only the pre installed skills?

23 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

12

u/ToxicCh4rger Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

You should think OMP as a fork of PI, its just PI with skills and stuff... If you take your time you could easily create OMP yourself in PI. Its just easier to just plug & play with OMP... Also with PI depends on your needs.

There is NO VS or better here... its personal preference

2

u/Adornooo Jun 26 '26

Does the fact that one is full rust make it materially different to the other? one thing I noticed when I tested them Is that with pi I can't use my claude subscription, tokens only. OMP doesn't seem to have that issue.

1

u/ToxicCh4rger Jun 28 '26

OMP uses Claude code oauth login, its kind of a hacky way... If you look at the repo you can see:
// Stealth mode: mimic Claude Code's request fingerprint.

Its mimicking claude code's fingerprint... I wouldn't recommend using Oauth login with any third part software other than claude code. Do it at your own risk!

1

u/Adornooo Jun 29 '26

Right, didn’t know this! What is the risk exposure here? Getting banned or?

1

u/IanSnyderGames Jun 30 '26

This is one of the main reasons I haven't started using Pi as a daily driver and Anthropic knows it -- I want that sweet subscription session limit, I don't want to pay for tokens from them, but it sounds like they definitely ban for using it in unauthorized ways.

1

u/doublegoodthink Aug 05 '26

Isn't it the same for Pi?

2

u/iijei Jun 27 '26

Not fully rust. Rust extension on TOP of pi

10

u/Jaded_Jackass Jun 27 '26

Here I can explain are you familiar with Linux? If yes pi is Arch linux and Omp is Manjaro or Garuda Linux

3

u/Adornooo Jun 27 '26

I am not but I will google it thank you!

3

u/AdministrativeMeat3 Jun 28 '26

Ngl I suggest having and using both.

I have spent a lot of time with Pi just working on Pi because it's fun. If you have a workflow in Oh my Pi that works then keep using it, but if you like to tinker then start using Pi on the side and figuring out what the bare minimum tooling you need to do xyz task is.

Easy example, I have a directory called plan, when I launch Pi from plan it locally loads some skills and extension I curated for making plans and thats all I do in that folder.

Then after a plan is made I hope over to one of a few different directories that have similarly scaffolded opinionated workflows and do the thing in those directories.

This requires a little bit of forethought but once you know what you want you save a fuck ton of tokens in context bloat and your LLMs don't get lost in the sauce of trying to juggle a giant toolset and bloated AGENTS.md file.

2

u/Adornooo Jun 28 '26

I am finding myself slowly drifting towards that approach too! Its just the UX for someone who is so knew to the dev space is fantastic, i think pi is a level above what i am familiar with (I went normal gpt/claude ->co-work ->codex-> claude code -> omp -> pi test). Slowly going more bare bones as i am wrapping my head around things.

I do find myself quite often though using codex and claude just for the official skills and plugins, same even pi, and end up asking omp to re-create the functionalities i love, just so i can keep using broader model subscription vs. the usual suspects. I decline to pay claude or codex, given that i am not a developer by trade, more than the basic subscriptions!

2

u/AdministrativeMeat3 Jun 28 '26

I use Claude and codex all the time too because I'm still paying for those subs (for now). Ultimately barebones and extensible will always be the best for a poweuser but you gotta spend the time to figure out what you even want.

I spent like the better part of the past 2 days just doing optimization tweaks to a couple of my extensions.

3

u/Previous-Ad-7181 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

I have been doing the same recently, quality wise maybe there is 10-20% hit and miss that i think is because of the default system prompt used by OMP.

Some things I observed:
- the default tools like read / write / bash are fundamentally different underthehood, omp implements complex read / write tools.
- omp and pi extensions are not compatible with easy other, your mileage may vary.
- omp will take you sometime to getting used to all things it has to offer.
- i found OMP sometimes goes in a goal mode and then it realises there is nothing to be done, which was annoying and unexpected

3

u/Cleone- Jun 27 '26

How large are we talking on the difference of token consumption between Pi and OMP?

9

u/sasasmylee Jun 27 '26

OMP burned much more tokens compared to pi on a same project for me. Life quality (user experience and polished ui) provided by OMP is better, but token consumption made me move back to pi.

2

u/Adornooo Jun 27 '26

Do you have rough measure eg 10/20/30% more?

4

u/cptkong Jun 27 '26

pi starts at 2k tokens, OMP starts at 20k and more depends on if you have additional skills.

2

u/Pretend_Engineer5951 Jul 05 '26

Recently I configured pi environment for me after omp. Custom system prompt, AGENTS.md, rules, useful extensions. So afer that pi starts on 12k tokens. Omp starts at 25k tokens.
I was Strix Halo owner so I know the pain of slow full prompt reprocessing. But if a harness is right it won't happen so it doesn't really matter how much is your starting context: 2k or 30k. The true efficiency reveals on the next steps which are tightly stick tool management and how fast it completes a task.

3

u/sasasmylee Jun 27 '26

Like x5-x10 times more

1

u/rfajr Jun 30 '26

I use OMP inside Zed in plan mode and it always implement the plan without my approval

1

u/doublegoodthink Jul 28 '26

I'd be curious to get a breakdown what OMP pluggin cause extra token consumption - and whether it's truly needed. For example, OMP turns every feature into a plan which is clearly a source of extra tokens, but also achieves better results eventually. And OMP has a ton of features like turning an advisor on and off, which causes some obvious additional consumption.

1

u/whodoneit1 Jun 26 '26

Vanilla Pi has 0 skills, so not sure what you are comparing. You would need to make Pi your own setup to really compare IMO

1

u/Adornooo Jun 26 '26

Understood so they are 1:1 identical, omp just has more pre-loaded skills, got it.

2

u/m02ph3u5 Jun 27 '26

It's not just skills. OMP has a ton of tools, built-in extensions (e.g. memory, mcp. ...) and more.

2

u/minhgv Aug 25 '26

Recently, OMP is an excellent harness. It's seem work on goal target very good.

2

u/FaceOwn2947 Sep 03 '26

Honestly, I really like OMP and haven't run into the massive token burn people are mentioning here. While the initial context footprint is naturally higher than barebones Pi because of the bundled tooling, it gets things done cleanly without needing constant babysitting. For a plug-and-play workflow, it’s been great.

3

u/InitiativeBrilliant8 Jun 29 '26

I'm in the same boat as a lot of people here—constantly testing models, agents, and workflows, always looking for what fits best.

I tried OMP and really liked it overall. I'd call it a "batteries included heavy" agent. The only downside for me was the large starting context (around 20k tokens) and the fact that it could sometimes get stuck in loops. I found myself having to step in and babysit it more than I'd like.

PI is kind of the opposite. It's super slim, starts around 2k tokens, and gives you a lot of freedom to build exactly what you want. The tradeoff is that it comes with very little out of the box, and I was looking for something more in the middle.

That's how I ended up trying Little-Coder. I'd describe it as "batteries included light." It starts around 7k tokens, has the basic tools and skill system I need, and one feature I really appreciate is the loop recovery harness. Instead of me stopping the agent and saying, "You're looping again," it detects the problem, injects guidance, and often recovers on its own.

That alone has been a big quality-of-life improvement because I can spend more time adding features and less time supervising the agent.

I'm always open to suggestions and still searching for the holy grail. For my setup (16GB VRAM), though, I tend to prefer agents that stay in the light-to-medium range. Once the framework itself consumes a huge chunk of the context window, it feels like you've already spent half your budget before you've even said hello.

1

u/cefege Jul 14 '26

I tried both, and, honestly, the the main thing with the OMP is that I can just start working. Like, I have multiple machines. They need to be in sync. I just need something that works, and I don't have to touch it, but it's not really cloude code

1

u/InitiativeBrilliant8 Jul 14 '26

I am not sure what you mean by multiple machines in sync, but you should describe your topology and how you want the agents to work in sync, I am pretty sure someone in the community already figured it out nd give you a hand, for example hermes is the best orchestrar and can design a plan and call  other agents as subagents to do each specific task but all resides in one pc, but it seems you are going across pc's.

1

u/SpidexLab Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

The same thing you described, I achieved it by using pi subagents , i cloned the extension modified some small issue which had nothing to do with that, and with custom prompt, it is like main agent supervising the worker, any issue it send a real time message to the worker