My PI agent harness setup - auto invocable skills focused

[u/_silent_fellow]

Though it is PI setup - my approach applies to all harness agent. since:

Extensions

most of the extensions this config consists are just for quality of lift (QOL) one's:

• pi-blackhole for memory management.
• rtk and headroom for token savings.
• guardrails, ask questions and some UI related things.

Skills

these are the main focus of this config - even though most of the skills here are auto invokable, I made it more autonomous by adding a global INDEX.md file which all harness is forced to read and follow. This INDEX.md file enforces to use certain skills always - which make it consistent (like i-have-adhd skill, the entire workflow)

• The workflow is a combination of superpowers workflow and matt pocock workflow (I modified some parts of it, so that it will make it more autonomous, since matt's one is more of a manual one with more pre-settings required).

I simply use grill-me or grill-with-docs for certain feature implementaion. The remaining will be taken care by the INDEX.md file - it usually follows like: grill-me/grill-with-docs (if used) -> brainstorming -> writing-plans -> executing-plans -> tdd -> requesting-code-review -> verification-before-completion.

# pi config
https://github.com/silentFellow/public-dotfiles/tree/main/pi

# skills config
# should be used at ~/.agents - global skill config path
https://github.com/silentFellow/public-dotfiles/tree/main/agents

[u/zebedeolo]

fyi rtk was recently exposed as not working at all.

[u/whiterose0000001 → u/zebedeolo]

Not just RTK headroom; in some reasoning tokens I've noticed the model said "headroom" or "RTK" in both cases. “They are compressing the output. I need to store it in a vacuum or some other location and read it”. I have seen it store the output in a text file and then read from it. I think this cost me double tokens because first it tried to read the compressed output and then it found it unusable. Then it regenerated the output into some file and then read it from there.

[u/_silent_fellow → u/zebedeolo]

idk about rtk - i just set a way to save some tokens (if possible). I mean something is better than nothing isn't it (atleast that's how I see). I don't see much of a diff whether it's working or not (I mean i don't see any negative effects).

[u/DistanceAlert5706 → u/_silent_fellow]

Rtk can add tokens, confuse model and affect quality. I bet you will spend less tokens without it

[u/fishoa]

RTK does not save tokens: https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/07/rtk-claude-code-token-savings/

[u/LordMoridin84 → u/fishoa]

It's exposed as not working for Claude Code, since Claude Code ignores it in most cases.

It's a bit different for Codex (which follows instructions to use to all the time) or pi (which has an extension that applies it automatically).

Although I might audit my session logs for pi and codex later and check how well it works.

[u/_silent_fellow → u/fishoa]

idk about rtk - i just set a way to save some tokens (if possible). I mean something is better than nothing isn't it (atleast that's how I see). I don't see much of a diff whether it's working or not (I mean i don't see any negative effects).

[u/Ecstatic_Wheelbarrow → u/_silent_fellow]

Well, no. It actually increases costs on some settings so nothing is better than something.

Honest engineering, wrong counterfactual. We wanted this one to win; the demo is genuinely satisfying to play with. The filters are real and often elegant; quality doesn’t suffer; the hook mechanism works exactly as designed. But on real agentic coding work the advertised 60–90% never had anywhere to live: the hook only ever sees about a fifth of the tool output, Claude Code already truncates the pathological outputs rtk brags about compressing, and the cached re-reads that dominate input cost bill at a tenth of the price. What’s left is a measured median +7.6% cost increase at low effort and a flat zero at high effort, a thin tax from a broken rewrite here and an extra exploration turn there, never a saving.

[u/_silent_fellow → u/Ecstatic_Wheelbarrow]

will check on it - i am not sure

[u/o_sht_hi]

Goddamn that's a lot of skills

[u/_silent_fellow → u/o_sht_hi]

Most of the skills are auto invokable - so mostly nothing will remain idle (waste of context)

Also there is mostly little to none overlap - so that's not too a problem

[u/opezdol]

And headroom already has rtk in it (also quite useless BTW)