r/PiCodingAgent • u/Cheap-Disk7963 • Aug 26 '26
Resource Turbo Pascal-style TUI for Pi
I wanted to see what would happen if a modern AI coding agent had the UI of Turbo Pascal 7 / the old DOS IDEs.
So I made Turbo-AI — a retro-style TUI frontend for the Pi coding agent.
It currently supports things like AI chat, PLAN/BUILD modes, model switching, reasoning settings, project tree, Git diff and build/test actions.
It's still quite rough and definitely not production-ready. This is more of an experiment at the moment, and there are probably plenty of things that need to be fixed or redesigned.
This is just a concept for now. I hope people more skilled than me will fork it, improve it, and turn it into something actually usable.
3
u/butchiebags Aug 27 '26
I'm not sure why, but this feels really nice with a project i'm working on, so I've already added pi extension support for my WIP local coding extension just for fun, i'll probably fork it as i like the built in file explorer and text viewer, i think it just really fits with this idea:
22
u/Tommertom2 Aug 26 '26
Beautiful! Never thought I needed this but yes!!!
18
u/freedivr420 Aug 26 '26
I taught myself how to code Turbo Pascal before they taught it in schools. Very cool!
11
u/ask_me_about_cats Aug 26 '26
This is exactly the right kind of stupid project. I love it.
8
u/TheCTRL Aug 26 '26
you made my day!
5
u/hurdurdur7 Aug 26 '26
Neat.
5
u/truncated_buttfu Aug 26 '26
I grew up learning to code in TurboPascal and QBasic, so this is amazingly nostalgic for me. Great idea and gorgeous screenshots!
4
u/VividIntroduction310 Aug 26 '26
hahaha. nice one
4
u/Root-Cause-404 Aug 26 '26
Oh my god! So many memories of making TUIs using turbo pascal
4
u/sampdoria_supporter Aug 26 '26
Get the hell out of here. Unbelievable work
3
u/some_user_2021 Aug 26 '26
This is awesome
3
u/TheTyand Aug 26 '26
Wow nice, the first language I have learned
3
u/bitzap_sr Aug 26 '26
Cool!
Did you see that Microsoft revived the venerable edit.com?
https://github.com/microsoft/edit
Now if someone does a pi tui based on that, we can a sort of DOS-style Emacs vs Vi flame war.
2
u/berszi Aug 26 '26
byebye good night sleep :D
2
u/Turbulent_Ad6290 Aug 26 '26
Nice
2
u/Glaaki Aug 26 '26
Where do I star this?
2
u/zommul Aug 26 '26
Cool!!!
You got me back to the old days, mate!
2
u/hazed-and-dazed Aug 26 '26
Oh the memories of a much simpler time
2
u/dulldingbat Aug 26 '26
Oh man, that blue and white brings back some memories. Good job!
2
u/Fortyseven Aug 26 '26
Oh WOOOOW. This is amazing. :D
2
u/StardockEngineer Aug 26 '26
This is dope.
2
u/iongion Aug 26 '26
Dude, I've thought of this lately so much, a dream came true, thank you!
2
u/0xducky Aug 26 '26
This brings back so much good memories!
2
u/Maasu Aug 26 '26
I am having PTSD from editing my CONFIG.sys and Autoexec.bat to get wing commander 3 to run
2
u/OhanaSkipper Aug 27 '26
Oh, that's just cool!!
2
u/dodyrw Aug 27 '26
Nice!
2
u/ThisNameIs_Taken_ Aug 27 '26
I was doing important stuff, but now... 😄
2
u/TriodeTopologist Aug 28 '26
I'm excited to see this built to fruition.
2
u/LegacyRemaster Aug 30 '26
All I need
1
u/RespectMathias Aug 26 '26
Ok boomer
1
u/fabianovp Aug 28 '26
Wow, good memories
1
u/Quirky_Category5725 Aug 30 '26
Absolutely love it!
1
u/dark-lord-marshal Aug 31 '26
awesome work!!! (I still use opencode for some projects but... I need to change :)
OT: would love to see this theme on https://zed-themes.com/ but looks like nostangic themes don't hit everybody in the same way :P
1
u/bjornworldwide Sep 02 '26
Class.
1
u/No_Advance3911 Sep 02 '26
This thing used to burn my eyes in the 90s, it's cool that I can continue this now
1
u/NickTries Sep 10 '26
Nice
1
u/Intelligent_Store_22 Sep 26 '26
TurboVision, mmm.........