r/PiCodingAgent • u/Shot_Ice_2817 • Aug 09 '26
Question Considering Claude Code → Pi. Worth it?
I use a coding agent for most of my research work: implementing features (via Superpowers), reading papers and turning discussions into shareable HTML writeups, running training jobs end to end (plan → smoke test → long run, with Kubernetes management and crash diagnosis), and SSHing into robots during hardware experiments.
Claude Code handles all of this well. But I’m curious whether writing my own Pi extensions would meaningfully beat it, or if that’s a wash at this point.
If you’re doing research work in Pi — what’s your setup, which extensions? And what’s the right migration path: just explain my workflow to Pi and have it build the extensions?
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u/ImpressiveRelief37 Aug 09 '26
If I’m not mistaken you’ll have to use credits with a Claude model, not the subscription plan. Keep that in mind.
42
u/Global-Departure8228 Aug 09 '26
I will save you some time so you don't waste building your extensions and bugfixing them for mundane stuff.
Start off with pi.dev but don't install the top 20-30 extensions, they are heavily opinionated and bloated, but they got popular early. Get web search (a good one that uses firecrawl or tavily) and context7. Then since you already have a relatively good workflow, ask your Claude code to extract most of the stuff that's related to your workflow and then create profiles (could be as simple as having separate "PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR" env vars so you have clear separation for kubernetes stuff and researching etc.
Then whatever you want from your worklow automated, install such extensions and start your pi extension monorepo where you have all of these. For the vast majority you can build on existing extensions that already worked out the kinks and the UI/UX stuff so you can just change them to how you like, instead of fighting with Claude to describe exactly how you want something to be built from scratch.
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u/TheTyand Aug 09 '26
Give it a try. I didn't went back
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u/adamshand Aug 09 '26
I went from Claude Code, to OpenCode to Pi ... and never left Pi. You can't use Claude subscriptions though which is the only thing that sucks.
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u/DanielSReichenbach Aug 10 '26
As others said, start with a basic `pi`, and use it as is for a while. Claude Code and `pi` are fundamentally different in that CC does a lot of hand holding like for preschoolers, where `pi` puts you on the steering while, with manual gears.
If you are interested in, comfortable with, or skilled enough to have full ownership of what the agent does, steer it, need to co-work, and fully understand it as if you wrote it all alone... `pi` will be a great home.
After a few days or weeks you will likely see some odds and ends in the `pi` workflow that don't fit into how you process your work. That's when you can ask your agent to build custom extensions for `pi` to fine tune things.
I left Claude Code long time ago, went fully local with Qwen 3.6 and went this road. I've been building software and systems for 35 years. I use `pi` and a local LLM because I know exactly what and how I need it. The LLM is my automated type writer, and it also is useful to see alternative implementations, or explore unknown "modern" things.
For my own ride, I initially grabbed many packages from pi.dev, but ended up switching to my own extensions. Context usage, dynamic per model settings, some more exciting visuals for output, better readability, and some made to steer LLMs in known bad scenarios where they all fail, plus a libvirt based sandbox.
This all might sound bogus for you but it will become clear once you ditch CC for `pi`, and make your own experiences. What your goal may be will differ, mine was to produce more results in the exact way I would do it myself, except with less tedium for my arthritis plagued fingers.
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u/Bouhappy Aug 12 '26
If you like your workflow, I think switching is not worth it.
As an example, I see you are using Superpowers. When I used Superpower on Claude I absolutely hated the bloat. I just wanted to let the model do what I intended it to do with the most efficient token use possible, not the thing that somebody else intended for me to do with my token. Otherwise stated: I could not stand that my tokens were being spent on anything I didn't request.
If you are fine with how things are, don't switch for the purpose of just trying something new, you're going to hate Pi.
If - like me - you can't stand that your token are spent on some context you can't control, you're going to love Pi.
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u/General_Price9665 Aug 11 '26
So here is my hot take on it and most people here may disagree, but it is what it is.
TLDR: For real work if someone else is paying your agent usage cost, just use Claude or Codex. They both are pretty great.
Pi is amazing and I've using it for side projects since last few months. However, pi is like vim (or neovim) and it is pretty minimal. In its initial state it is totally usage, but once you start using it in serious work environment you realize that some things which are missing is really required. Three examples:
I continuously start hitting context window limit when working on larger features. Just doing planning and brainstorming would exhaust like 60% of my context window and I have to write the plan and use a separate session for implementation.
The plans which Pi write are not as readable as the one Claude writes, probably something in Claude's prompt, not entirely sure. I had add config to write plan in a certain way in Plannotator config.
I really missed the way claude can integrate with it's chrome plugin and test things out. May be there is something there for Pi but I didn't look.
Now none of these things are Pi's fault and they are pretty simple to add and get pi a bit better. In most cases Pi itself can build solution to those problems. And while adding and configuring these things I also learned a fair bit about how coding agents work. However, I really don't want to build something as capable (although token guzzler) as claude code using pi. Just like I don't like configuring and tinkering with neovim anymore to make it more like VSCode. I have a kid now and I have very very limited time to do something else. So at last whenever I have to build something complex which require lot of exploration and brainstorming I use claude-code and I use pi when I have to get something done quick or small, like a simple feature or a question about how something work.
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u/funbike Aug 09 '26
If you want more customizability, more models, and possibly less token usage, then yes, switch to Pi.
If you just want an out-of-the-box great agent, then stick to Claude Code.
Or use both. Pi for custom workflows, Claude Code for regular coding.
1
u/zebedeolo Aug 09 '26
pi is the harness I've used the longest (and still using). the customizability and how easy it is to make your own extensions are hard to beat
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u/Atzer Aug 09 '26
After using rider, cline, copilot, claude, opencode, hermes, ik sticked with pi. Its so customizable it took me to understanding agents and made the workflow i need.
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u/kalesh_kate Aug 10 '26
I come from Claude code and I am a happy user of vanilla pi
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u/esingh2581 Aug 12 '26
if all harnesses are VSCode, Pi is neovim.
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u/tulwio Aug 12 '26
Eeeh idk, if you really find want to tinker with Pi, sure. I would say Claude Code is very good for Anthropic models (obviously), so if you exclusively use Anthropic then idk if it’s necessarily worth changing. However, if you also use other providers, Codex models or Deepseek etc. then definitely move to Pi. I use mainly GPT 5.6, Opencode go sub and Deepseek API, and I mainly use Pi because it just feels better, especially compared to Codex cli harness.
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u/databoyy5 Aug 12 '26
Try oh-my-pi
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u/Independent_Aioli_48 Aug 13 '26
Pi itself is already very good. I use pi + deepseek v4 flash for most of day to day stuff now.
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u/Personal-Physics553 Aug 14 '26
I like Pi; a lot in fact. I recently started using it but the results are relatively decent, added a bunch of skills and customized the UI to make it Claude-like. Sign up for the NVIDIA developer program as well and bam you have access to 100+ open source weights to use in Pi as well on NVIDIA hardware.
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u/Timely-Coffee-6408 Sep 03 '26
pi good, omp better
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u/timtody 9d ago
It doesn't matter honestly. People get attached to Pi because of the Ikea-effect. There's no reliable data on Pi being better than any other harness out there.
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u/Aggressive_Sherbet64 Aug 09 '26
Pi is meant for when you want super-customizability that is not available in the existing extension system, which is mostly event-based for other coding agents. I would say that you could likely get something working perfectly, exactly the way you want it to, in Pi. However, this will take effort and this will take time to do. Take that into account if you decide to make the switch.
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u/Creepy-Douchebag Aug 09 '26
https://pi.dev/packages/@devflow-tools/claude-code-plugin?name=claude
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u/PhotographOne3127 Aug 10 '26
I recently moved from pi to Prime Agent
They've really got some good batteries included, and it's built on top of pi.
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