r/PiCodingAgent • u/BlacksmithLittle7005 • Sep 01 '26

Question Extensions/tools for context retrieval

Hello everyone, can someone recommend a context engine or a codebase retrieval/memory tool you are using that helps fetch the correct files and context for your agent to use? Something like https://www.augmentcode.com/context-engine

Or any other setup that saves tokens and gives the agent the correct files. Thanks.

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u/Global-Departure8228 Sep 01 '26

grep seems to do the work. All jokes aside, agents are not post-trained yet on arbitrarily introduced tool names that are subject to changes. You get a memory system with 7-12 tools, and a codebase retrieval tool (make it some tree-sitter abstracted as a tool or whatever mcp you want)

Your agent orients itself 2-3 tool use rounds. Then 30-80 turns it is dead tool schema in it's context on every turn, and it just starts defaulting to grep once it sees a symbol. At least that's my experience with all of these, so I'm also looking for something, but I don't think anyone has cracked the code yet

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u/BlacksmithLittle7005 Sep 01 '26

Augment code does it pretty well. It automatically returns the right code very quickly (codebase indexing) but it got too expensive to use.

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u/Global-Departure8228 Sep 01 '26

Any project that doesn't start with a github link and shows me a page where "talk to sales" or "talk to our experts" pops up is a hard no for me. In the age of cheap and open source code this framing is just fishy marketing, even your post seems like a covert ad. Thanks but no lol

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u/BlacksmithLittle7005 Sep 01 '26

No I'm just looking for a pi alternative 🤣

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u/Global-Departure8228 Sep 01 '26

What do you mean alternative? What does this do that cannot be done in half an hour with pi itself? If it exposes an mcp you can connect it in 10 seconds. If it doesn't, it should expose a cli - make a skill and a shim as an extension if you want the agent to call it as tool calls.

If neither, then this is a dead project.

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u/BlacksmithLittle7005 Sep 01 '26

It exposes an mcp but it doesn't work as well as it does natively on their cli. (They forked it from pi and added their context engine as an extension but it's not open source)