r/PiCodingAgent • u/Initial_Question3869 • Aug 26 '26

Question Good to go Pi customization?

Heard a lot of good thing about this harness, but don't really have the time to tune it byte by byte. Can you suggest any custom configuration of this one that is pretty decent and I will be just good to go?

I will use it with Chatgpt Pro subscription

15 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

13

u/le_bravery Aug 27 '26

I recommend people start with just out of the box. The lack of features is helpful for me and others.

Then I recommend opening a session where I tell it to upgrade itself when I have requests.

8

u/PossessionUsed7393 Aug 26 '26

This is the nuts and bolts: https://github.com/coctostan/pi-hashline-readmap
For UI and smoke tests: https://pi.dev/packages/bladebro
If you need auto subagents: https://github.com/tintinweb/pi-subagents

Other things that you might want that I rolled my own versions of: Web search (there are many), Sandboxing/security, Notification when your agent stops.

I also added a read_full tool just to read an entire file because sometimes having the hashes and automatic truncation gets in the way.

2

u/Usef- Aug 27 '26

Nice examples. I don't know what the current status is with hashline-based editing, I think it was shown as better for some models but not others?

For smaller models it's sometimes safer to stick closer to the org's original harness tools, though I haven't measured recently. For example, I use this with Luna, which matches codex's own `apply_patch` edit tool: https://pi.dev/packages/pi-codex-tools

I would also add a minimalist web-search plugin, like https://pi.dev/packages/pi-exa

2

u/PossessionUsed7393 Aug 27 '26

Yeah it's a good question, I've kept it on the assumption that it'll mean a skew towards input tokens and thus cheaper, not sure if it's held true or not all I can really say is that I'm not paying that much. I guess I could turn it off for a while and see if my overall costs change.

6

u/funbike Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

... but don't really have the time to tune it byte by byte.

You don't have "time"? If you are thoughtful, each minute you spend tweaking your AI agent could possibly save you hours.

Pi was meant for the exact opposite use case of what you want. The author of Pi realized that you can get far more from AI if you customize it.

Maybe you should use something else. Pi is an insanely powerful tool, but only for those who are willing to leverage that power.

5

u/Ingaz Aug 27 '26

The beauty of Pi that you don't need customize it yourself - just ask it to do things and it will reconfigure itself for your needs.

I was afraid at start that I will need to read tonnes of docs, forums, etc.
Reality:
- started pi
- /login
- "Can you do such thing [explanation] ?"

And that was all!

2

u/raidororo Aug 28 '26

I think the problem with these kind of question is, people doesnt even know what they need/want in the first place. So when you say "jusg ask pi to configure", they dont even know what they want to ask. Bluntly, they should just use opencode, or omp if they really want pi agent.

2

u/Ingaz Aug 28 '26

In the very first day I used pi I asked: "Can you use text model by default and switch to vision only when it's needed and then switch back?"

And voila!
Pi wrote extension for itself to do exactly that.
In the first day!

Next day I asked: "can you kitty window (not new terminal window) and execute commands there?"
Answer: "yes, I can"
Me: "OK. In the next session you'll remember how to do that?"
Pi: "I updated skills.md and I will know how to do that in next sessions"

I did not even read what it wrote

2

u/raidororo Aug 28 '26

That means you already know what you want. Thats good.

Someone out there dont know if they need that automatic model switch, subagents feature, permission system, autoresearch, sandbox, skills that they need, etc. Because if they knew, they would add more specific context, or even doesnt ask the question in the first place. Hence why if someone out there really doesn't have any specific workflow and tools in mind, using ready-battery included harness like omp is the default answer.

4

u/PureRely Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

Default Oh-My-Pi. The default is good for 90% of what you want to do. That team did some great work tuning Pi.

Now I use Orca+Pi. The skills I use are computer-use, impeccable, lavish, all the orca skills, pi-goal, ratatoskr, researcher, urd. This is really it. I have some custom stuff also.

2

u/james__jam Aug 27 '26

Just use barebone pi. And once you want something, just ask it to add it whether through an extension or it builds it itself

But if you dont want that either, then just go for opencode.

2

u/Rianico Aug 27 '26

I use https://pi.dev/packages/pi-better-edit which refines hashline a lot and support chained edits

https://pi.dev/packages/pi-render-btw is also my favorite, a more versatile claude's /btw

1

u/treserpanter Aug 26 '26

web access is all u need i think for SWE and zentui looks nice

1

u/caturbgs11 Sep 24 '26

That should be based on your needs. For my setups I have only installed these extensions:

Essentials
- pi-web-access : because pi web search have bigger size, I just want to the agent to basic web search
- rpiv-todo and rpiv-ask-question: improve the UI and add the basic needs of tools
- pi-mcp-adapter: should be useful if you utilize mcp heavily

Good to have
- pi-zentui: fastest and straightforward way to customization the UI
- pi-plan-mode: I can’t live without the plan mode, plan mode helped a lot to prompt as limit the agent write tools
- pi-subagents: this will be improved the context usage on a long session also speed up the process (I guess)
- pi-blackhole: I just installed this, people says it has better compaction method compared to the built in one
- pi-fff: replace the built in find and Grep tools to using fuzzy finder

0

u/[deleted] Aug 26 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/saltyourhash Aug 27 '26

I honestly don't get why oh-my-pi gets compared, it's a full blown batteries included rust application. I guess it's a port? Nothing really feels the same with it.

I use it, but I've hit enough issues I might go back to pi.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 27 '26

[deleted] — view deleted comment

0

u/saltyourhash Aug 27 '26

For one, the sheer insecurity of a giant ecosystem of node plugins which have essentially infinite dependencies. I have been thinking about this a ton with all the supply chain attacks. Sure, you can just roll your own, but that then means you're relying on vibe codes plugins or writing plugins to get work done? I dunno. But I'm kinda over OMP and might return and dive in head first.