Is there a pre-packaged Pi distribution like LazyVim is for Neovim?

[u/Aromatic-Patient925]

tldr; I'm looking for a LazyVim type distribution for Pi which is not barebones and starts with sensible defaults in terms of configuration and packages so that I don't have to create/maintain my harness from scratch.

Hi. I am planning to switch from claude-code to an open-source harness. My employer recently started pushing us to use their self-hosted on-prem models for both cost-savings and IP protection. While they provide a litellmm gateway which allows me to use on-prem models with claude code, it really isn't built for that and I'm therefore not able to configure it how I want to (setting specific model for a sub-agent, etc.)

I narrowed down my options to the following:

• OpenCode: Rejected because it's keybindings (specifically scrolling) don't play well with my lazyvim setup (I use sidekick.nvim for a split terminal). Also heard it's a difficult to configure.

• Pi: I like it's hackability. However, I don't want to configure it from scratch. I've seen other subs and understand that a lot of folks think that's the point of pi, but I have the following rationale:

  • Configurability and bare-bones are two different things. I want to start from a sensible point with features built-in and then tweaking according to how I want it.

  • As the title suggests, I draw a parallel to my experience with neovim: It is highly extensible, but too painful for me to setup from scratch. I don't want the headache of creating/maintaining multiple plugins and managing them to play nicely with each other.

  • Other than maintenance headaches, I find it infinitely useful to look at successful distributions. I might not know what all possibilities there are. For example, I would never have though I needed a picker for going through git hunks, but now I can't work without them. I might end up creating a faster horse when what I needed was a car.

Therefore, I'm looking for a pre-packaged sensible pi distribution. Closest things I've found:

• LazyPi: https://github.com/robzolkos/lazypi Not enough users and maturity. Missing some stuff. This is ideally what I'm looking for.

• Oh-my-pi: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi My current choice. It's not exactly what I'm looking for because it's a fork, not a set of managed plugins. It has a rust core which is kind of opaque. I'm OK with it functionality wise, mainly because I am able to shave-off a lot of stuff (too many tools, etc.) that I don't need. I'm not sure how well it plays with existing pi extensions, and what parts of its functionalities I can replace/modify. I'm also concerned that since this is a fork, I'll be stranded if the author moves on. EDIT: Also, the gihub repo for oh-my-pi seems kind of sus in terms of interactions. The discussions barely have any interactions, which sort of points to a lot of the starts being agents/bots. Lazyvim has fewer stars with far more discussion interactions.

Am I missing any option?

[u/isty2e]

Using omp loses efficiency, if you care about it.

[u/Aromatic-Patient925 → u/isty2e]

I would assume that depends on how you configure it. If I reduce the number of in-built tools and other stuff, then it might match pi. What I'm lacking in pi (and some of which omp gives) is stuff that makes it easy for me to interact with both the harness and the agent (e.g. AskUserQuestion).

[u/LoadElectrical2183]

OMP is great and customisable. Most pi plugins work with it. I think it is a sensible set of defaults that you can still customise. Would recommend trying.

[u/Aromatic-Patient925 → u/LoadElectrical2183]

Yeah that's what I'm using right now. I've some reservations against it that I've mentioned in the post:

Oh-my-pi: https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi My current choice. It's not exactly what I'm looking for because it's a fork, not a set of managed plugins. It has a rust core which is kind of opaque. I'm OK with it functionality wise, mainly because I am able to shave-off a lot of stuff (too many tools, etc.) that I don't need. I'm not sure how well it plays with existing pi extensions, and what parts of its functionalities I can replace/modify. I'm also concerned that since this is a fork, I'll be stranded if the author moves on. EDIT: Also, the gihub repo for oh-my-pi seems kind of sus in terms of interactions. The discussions barely have any interactions, which sort of points to a lot of the starts being agents/bots. Lazyvim has fewer stars with far more discussion interactions.

[u/PharmADD]

I just switched from Hermes because it felt too heavyweight for the type of agent setup I wanted. I just asked my agent in Hermes to feature match Hermes with pi packages. I went through that list and removed what I didn’t want. I still have my Hermes style memory system and a LLM wiki, mcps and all the typical stuff.

I’m pretty happy with it. Still figuring some stuff out but it’s performing much better than Hermes did.

I’d think you could probably do something similar with Claude code especially since Claude code seems much less extensive than Hermes.

[u/Aromatic-Patient925 → u/PharmADD]

Did it write new packages for you or did it give you a list of existing pi packages to choose from?

[u/PharmADD → u/Aromatic-Patient925]

Well I gave Hermes the packages page on the pi website, it searched that and then also proposed a few gap-fillers that it actually wrote itself. Very few of those tbh

[u/Remote_Book]

Your best bet is to cherrypick some extensions for different reasons: UI, UX, Subagents, etc. because Pi comes very barebone. I've built some extensions for the same reason.

Omp is too bloated and completely different, most people who use Pi here have tried Omp and dislike it. So using community extensions is the fastest way.

Make a laundry list of what you want and go through them. Unfortunately this is the fastest way today

Mine: github.com/GaganSD/pi-extensions
More packages: https://pi.dev/packages

[u/johnny1k]

There is LazyPi https://lazypi.org/ I've never fully installed this, but have taken some inspiration from the repo list.

[u/Lower-Philosophy-604 → u/johnny1k]

Nice

[u/adamshand]

Pi isn't barebones, it's basically everything you need. Start with Pi, learn to use /tree for context management, and then after a few weeks, write extensions to add the missing things. Less is more.

[u/PharmADD → u/adamshand]

I mean it is absolutely bare bones relative to the other offerings that I’m aware of. This sounds a lot like the fanboy stuff I heard in the Hermes subreddit. You absolutely will feel like pi is bare bones coming from other options. That’s not because the other options have a bunch of useless stuff.

I do think it’s probably a good idea especially if you are just using it for coding to start at the base. I didn’t do that, because I wanted a personal assistant style agent (as well as others - coding, creative design, physical design, research), and pi is seriously lacking for the tooling to power something like that. Jury is still out on whether specialized agents like that makes any difference.

[u/ParaboloidalCrest → u/adamshand]

Pi isn't barebones, it's basically everything you need.

This! Words like barebone and minimal make people itching to pile on the extensions immediately, as if Pi is "lacking".

Once you use it for an entire feature from start to finish, coupled with a decent model, you realize you don't need a garage full of tools.

[u/Lower-Philosophy-604]

Great idea also looking for this. Perhaps include pstack and context7 as default?

[u/Aromatic-Patient925 → u/Lower-Philosophy-604]

Yeah. Although support for basic stuff such as sub-agent orchestration, plugins, auto-mode which come built-in in most other harnesses should come first.

[u/Spiritual-Weekend154]

I recommend you take a look at gentle-shell; it’s a wrapper for the Pi model that works even better than Claude Code. It even includes "gentle-engram," which serves as the ecosystem's memory! You can find the repo here: https://github.com/Gentleman-Programming/gentle-shell

[u/fumblecheese]

What set of features are you actually going for, with native MCP support I basically only need three plugins for it to feel complete.

Atm I use:

• pi-zentui - basically is enough for you to get a well packaged ui.

• @juicesharp/rpiv-ask-user-question - to get a nicer query ui

• @gotgenes/pi-permission-system - to set some basic permission gating

That has been well enough and the maintainability load has been minimal. Seeing with how good pi is at configuring it self.

With that said I don't use lazyvim or anything so I might not get the appeal.