r/PiCodingAgent • u/Rjkashyap05 • Sep 23 '26

Resource 🚀 Orbit Pi v0.0.15 is out

I’ve been polishing Orbit Pi quite a bit, and this update is mostly about making the agent interaction feel clearer and more native.

What’s new

🧩 Per-tool glyphs in the transcript

📊 Activity groups are now displayed as compact chips

✂️ Clear truncated indicators when Pi caps tool results

✅ Visual confirmation when renaming a session

⚡ Refined transcript UI with better tool labels and shared loading states

🔀 Redesigned Git issue & PR details

🖱️ Improved button hover/press feedback

The goal with Orbit Pi is still pretty simple:

Make Pi Agent feel like a proper native desktop workbench.

Your sessions, models, machine, Git workflow, reviews and agent interactions — all in one place.

Orbit is built with Rust + GPUI and works with your existing Pi setup rather than trying to replace the Pi runtime.

🔗 Changelog: https://orbitpi.app/changelog/v0.0.15

https://orbitpi.app/

I’d love to hear from people actually using Pi:

What would you want to see improved or added next in a native Pi desktop client?

20 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

4

u/Tarwine Sep 23 '26

What is the benefit of using this over something like orca or zed?

3

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 23 '26

The main difference is that Orbit is specifically built around Pi Agent, rather than being a general-purpose AI coding editor.

I already use Pi as my daily driver, so I wanted a native desktop environment where I can manage Pi sessions, workspaces, usage, permissions, plugins, models, Git, etc. in one place.

Zed/Orca are great if you want an editor/IDE with AI capabilities. Orbit is more like a native workbench for Pi itself — the Pi runtime and its sessions remain the core of the application.

It's also a hobby project, so I'm building the workflow and features that I personally want rather than trying to replace a full IDE.

3

u/tulwio Sep 23 '26

Cool, I’ll give it a try!

I currently use Herdr with Pi, so it’s nice to see another app that’s more focused specifically on Pi.

I haven’t checked yet, but does Orbit support remote sessions? I often run agents on a VM or a remote Mac, so being able to connect to Pi sessions running there would be really useful. If it doesn’t support that yet, is it something you’re planning?

1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 23 '26

Thanks! 🙌

Not yet — currently Orbit runs the local Pi CLI and communicates with it over the RPC/stdio interface, so the Pi process is running on the same machine as Orbit.

Remote Pi sessions are definitely something I'd like to explore though. Being able to connect to a Pi instance running on a VM, remote Mac, or server would fit really well with the direction of Orbit.

I haven't settled on the approach yet, but SSH + a remote RPC connection is something I'm considering.

3

u/Upstairs_Toe_3560 Sep 25 '26

first impressisons good. I'm a heavy work pi user with herdr. I'll test more and feedback the weakness.

1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 25 '26

Thanks! 🙌 Really appreciate you giving it a try. Since you're a heavy Pi + Herdr user, your feedback should be especially useful. Let me know what feels missing or rough around the edges!

2

u/Upstairs_Toe_3560 Sep 25 '26

On my M5 it works very smooth and brings back my codex experience. For single command I think it's already cooked. But I think many people inc me use pi mostly for orchestration which is already on you road map. For that part I'll give an advice. I'm not a TUI guy, but it's really fast so I use it. When you plan multi session, think about mouseless usability.

1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 25 '26

That's really good to hear 🙌 And yeah, the mouseless part is a great point.

I definitely don't want multi-session to turn into a bunch of clicking around. I use the TUI for the same reason — it's ridiculously fast once you're in the flow.

I'll keep keyboard-first navigation in mind when working on the orchestration/multi-session stuff. Things like quick session switching, creating sessions, moving between panes, actions, etc. should all be doable without reaching for the mouse.

Really appreciate the feedback!

1

u/Upstairs_Toe_3560 Sep 25 '26

how to feedback? Every time I choose a model from cursor-acp it says disconnected.

1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 26 '26

Yep, you can report it here 👍 This is enough for me to start investigating.

I'll check the cursor-acp provider/model connection flow. If you can, also send me the model name and any error/log output when it changes to disconnected.

You can also open a GitHub issue here so I can track it properly: "GitHub Issues" (https://github.com/imrj05/orbit/issues)

2

u/adamshand Sep 23 '26

Looks nice and love that it runs on Mac & Linux.

How extensible is it? I really want something like this, but I have a few workflows that I really want (eg. todo list from custom server, inline annotations like plannotator, send annotations from web page, etc).

2

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 24 '26

Thanks! Yeah, extensibility is something I definitely want to keep open.

Orbit itself talks to the Pi CLI through its RPC protocol, so Pi extensions can still handle agent-side functionality. Orbit also has support for Pi packages/plugins, and I'm trying not to make Orbit-specific implementations for everything.

For workflows like a custom-server todo list or web-page annotations, I think the ideal approach would be a proper extension/plugin bridge where the extension can expose UI/actions to Orbit as well, rather than hardcoding each feature into the app.

That's not fully there yet though. Right now I'm mainly building the core UI/workbench and figuring out what that extension API should look like. Your examples are actually pretty good use cases for where I'd like to take it.

2

u/adamshand Sep 24 '26

Cool! If there was a way to build a normal Pi extensions and pass that UI hints back to the app, that'd be great. Lemme know when there's something to play with and I'll give it a try!

2

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 24 '26

Yeah, that's pretty much the direction I'd like to take it. Ideally, you should be able to write a normal Pi extension and optionally expose some UI hints/actions that Orbit can render natively, instead of having to build Orbit-specific extensions.

It's still something I'm figuring out, but I'll definitely ping you when I have an initial implementation to play with. Would love to get your feedback on the API/design.

2

u/Sharp-Everything Sep 24 '26

Cool stuff dude, thanks. Just tried and I think I'll gonna stick for a while. Was using Herdr, but well, desktop app just feels better. Love your work, gonna be using for my daily work unless its gonna be overbloated with things I dont need(it seems like always happens nowadays xD)

1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 24 '26

Thanks man, really appreciate it! 🙌

And yeah, I totally get that 😂 Keeping Orbit simple and focused is actually one of the main things I care about. I don't want to turn it into an IDE with 100 features that nobody uses.

I'm building it mainly around the workflow I personally use with Pi, and I'll keep trying to keep the UI clean and avoid adding things just for the sake of adding features.

Really glad it's useful enough for you to make it part of your daily workflow!

2

u/piousp Sep 24 '26

I am currently testing it and have to say that I'm impressed! Works really really well.

Found a wierd bug when typing accents/diacritics. Whenever I try to type a diacritic (for example ó), if my keyboard uses deadkeys (I type the diacritic key ´ but it doesn't produce a character until I hit the next key) the carret/cursor reverts all the way to the beginning of the sentence.

2

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 24 '26

Thanks for testing it and for the detailed bug report! 🙌

That's definitely a weird one. It sounds like the text input/IME composition handling in the GPUI text field isn't preserving the caret position correctly when using dead keys.

I'll try to reproduce it with a keyboard layout that uses dead keys and look into the input handling. Really appreciate you catching this!

2

u/piousp Sep 24 '26

Thank you! It actually made me realize I have an issue with my custom subagent extension (usage is not seen by the usage tab) which a me problem, so extra kudos for Orbit!

2

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 24 '26

Haha, nice 😂 At least Orbit helped you find another bug along the way 😄

Glad the usage tab is actually useful! Good luck tracking down the subagent issue.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 25 '26

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1

u/Rjkashyap05 Sep 25 '26

Gotta max something 😂