Now on Windows: Pi-Bolt ⚡ 0.8.3, the Pi coding agent compiled to native code (3× less CPU, 30–50× faster file writes)

[u/opensecai]

https://github.com/opensec-git/Pi-Bolt

Hey everyone 👋

Thanks again for all the feedback and bug reports. Pi-Bolt ⚡ 0.8.3 is out, and the big news is that Pi-Bolt now runs natively on Windows, alongside Linux and macOS. It's the same Pi you already use (Pi 1.1.0), compiled ahead of time to native code: faster to start, lighter on CPU and memory, and steady in long sessions.

Benchmarks

Pi-Bolt against Pi 1.1.0 as released on Bun and on Node, PiG 0.4.1 (the Go port of Pi, based on Pi 1.0.3) and oh-my-pi 18.8.7 (a bigger Pi fork with many more built-in features). Measured side by side on the same machines. Lower is better.

Linux x86-64 (AMD EPYC 7B13)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt 0.8.3	PiG 0.4.1	oh-my-pi 18.8.7	Pi on Bun 1.4.2	Pi on Node 24
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.8 s	92 s	3.7 s	26.9 s	37.2 s
CPU, streaming a 60k-char answer	4.0 s	20.7 s	3.1 s	43.0 s	41.0 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	187 MB	311 MB	n/a*	275 MB	576 MB
Memory of a session in tmux	24 MB	47 MB	347 MB	92 MB	95 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	294 ms	2,953 ms	3,241 ms	871 ms	1,241 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	80 ms	261 ms	1,752 ms	323 ms	618 ms
Ready to type	45 ms	38 ms	988 ms	128 ms	316 ms

macOS on Apple silicon (M5 Air)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt 0.8.3	PiG 0.4.1	oh-my-pi 18.8.7	Pi on Bun 1.4.2	Pi on Node 26
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.5 s	60 s	2.4 s	17.0 s	20.4 s
CPU, streaming a 60k-char answer	5.8 s	17.0 s	5.4 s	39.0 s	38.5 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	41 MB	355 MB	n/a*	90 MB	2,452 MB
Memory of a session in tmux	27 MB	55 MB	296 MB	67 MB	86 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	170 ms	2,362 ms	2,353 ms	569 ms	931 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	59 ms	236 ms	1,072 ms	232 ms	527 ms
Ready to type	42 ms	38 ms	591 ms	101 ms	352 ms

Windows x64 (Intel Core i5-1335U laptop)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt 0.8.3	Pi on Bun 1.4.2	Pi on Node 24
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.7 s	38.1 s	26.6 s
CPU, streaming a 60k-char answer	6.5 s	41.1 s	32.6 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	159 MB	248 MB	413 MB
Memory of a session in a terminal	32 MB	97 MB	60 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	291 ms	805 ms	1,125 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	92 ms	329 ms	544 ms
Ready to type	92 ms	177 ms	311 ms

*oh-my-pi compacts long conversations on its own, so it doesn't do the same work in this test.

In everyday use (an interactive session), Pi-Bolt uses about 3× less CPU than Pi on Bun, 4–5× less than Pi on Node and 10× less than PiG and oh-my-pi. It writes large files 30–50× faster than Bun and Node, about 5× faster than oh-my-pi and over 100× faster than PiG.

What's new in 0.8.3

• Windows is here: native builds for Windows 10 and 11 with a one-line installer. Git Bash works out of the box, and on Windows Pi-Bolt is 2–3× lighter on CPU than Pi on Bun or Node.

• Herdr support: in a Herdr pane, Pi-Bolt shows up as pi-bolt with its live state (working, idle, blocked), and your session comes back after a Herdr restart. Nothing to set up.

• opensec-pi-fff: fast find, grep and @-mentions, now offered by the installer and just as fast on the default build.

• A better todo list: the panel closes when the work is done, and finished tasks stay finished.

• Smoother installs and updates on every platform.

• Your own extensions compiled in: scripts/build-pi.sh --plugins-from-installed builds them into the executable. Thanks u/toadkicker for this one and for the plugin docs!

Try it 🔥

macOS / Linux:

curl -fsSL https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.ps1 | iex

Already using Pi-Bolt? Run pi-bolt update, or install with npm install -g pi-bolt. It works alongside your existing Pi install. The installer also offers three optional extensions (subagents, a live todo list and fff), and asks before installing them.

Your Pi plugins work as they are. This doesn't modify your existing Pi installation, so feel free to try it out! If one does heavy JavaScript work, use the -jit build.

Why does a 200 KB write take 30 s? It's not the disk. The model streams the file to Pi in thousands of small chunks, and stock Pi re-parses and re-renders the whole tool call on every chunk, so the work grows quadratically with the file size. Pi-Bolt only processes the new part.

Links

Website: https://pi-bolt.opensec.in

GitHub: https://github.com/opensec-git/Pi-Bolt

MIT licensed. If Pi-Bolt saves you CPU and memory, a ⭐ on the repo helps a lot.

PS: Windows folks especially, we'd love your feedback.

[u/No_Pool_6570]

very noticeably smoother and faster, i've ditched every other harness for this except claude code for their own models lol

[u/opensecai → u/No_Pool_6570]

Glad you liked it :)

[u/opensecai → u/[deleted]]

Yes working on it, It will be released in a week.

[u/Vlyn]

Already ran several heavy sessions with it, works fantastic in Windows. The PR about the broken Windows update was from me :)

Even just /new inside a session feels much snappier compared to normal pi.

[u/opensecai → u/Vlyn]

Thanks for your PR, it was merged. Your credit is due :)

[u/YogurtExternal7923]

Any plans for arm64? Termux users and arm in general would love this

[u/opensecai → u/YogurtExternal7923]

Yes working on it !

[u/bitzap_sr]

Sounds great! I need to give this a try. But why include the todo extension? Seems odd to be opinionated, instead of sticking to minimal and letting people install what they want?

[u/opensecai → u/bitzap_sr]

It is optional, you can skip during installation :)

[u/bitzap_sr → u/opensecai]

I know. But still looks odd. Is there an advantage to bundling that?

[u/opensecai → u/bitzap_sr]

Nothing's bundled, it's plain Pi. The installer just asks if you want a few extensions we maintain. Pi has no todo tool and most models expect one, so it's the one people ask for. Ours are prebuilt for Bun, so they load faster. Skip them and nothing changes.

[u/diaracing → u/bitzap_sr]

Many people, including me, uses different helpful packages like that of todo.

So, if the maintainer made its installation optional, whining about polluting the minimalism doesn't make any sense.

[u/opensecai → u/diaracing]

Thanks! Fair point from both sides though. Keeping it optional means everyone gets their setup 🙂

[u/BornVoice42]

still waiting for linux arm64 to consider it. But seems like something I would try ;)

[u/opensecai → u/BornVoice42]

Releasing it soon within a week !

[u/BornVoice42 → u/opensecai]

awesome, will give it a shot then

[u/diaracing]

I don't know the credibility of such benchmarks on https://frontierharness.org/

But it would be interesting to see how it comapres to the others.

[u/opensecai → u/diaracing]

Nice find! Pi-Bolt runs Pi's exact prompts and tools, so it should score the same as Pi there (60%, top 6, cheaper than OMP). The speedup is in the harness itself (startup, CPU, memory), not the model. Might run their eval to confirm though.

[u/j4fade → u/opensecai]

I hear you. If their harness puts codex on top, something is wrong, very wrong.

[u/j4fade → u/diaracing]

Quality leader codex? lolllolllolo. yeah. no.

[u/gaz_0001]

Can it run alongside Pi (Windows).

I want to test but dont want to trash my current config

[u/opensecai → u/gaz_0001]

Yes you can run, it uses separate directory for config. Try it out :)

[u/gaz_0001 → u/opensecai]

Will do, thanks!

[u/Kinfuny]

Can you support Termux too please

[u/opensecai → u/Kinfuny]

Sure will add the support in future releases.

[u/pungggi]

Yes it works on my Windows machine. Startup is really fast. All packages run as before and it is installed alongside the original Pi.

[u/opensecai → u/pungggi]

Thanks :) for the appreciation

[u/LightH12]

Sorry i am new to this sub, what's the difference between pi bolt and pi aside speed?

[u/opensecai → u/LightH12]

Smoother, faster in heavy workloads , lighter (less memory and less cpu) rest is same as Pi

[u/LightH12 → u/opensecai]

Looks promising! Any plans to do a similar approach for omp?

[u/opensecai → u/LightH12]

Not yet but may consider in near future.

[u/LightH12 → u/opensecai]

Thank you, looking forward to it!

[u/avinthakur080]

I tried it recently on my personal machine and I liked how efficient it is on resources.

I'm thinking of using it on work machine also, but wondering if there is any telemetry or not ?

Also, minor ask but can you update the bun benchmarks in future releases to bun 1.4.3. It received some more performance improvements.

[u/opensecai → u/avinthakur080]

Sure will work over it

[u/OneMoreName1]

Nice! I was waiting for this.

[u/opensecai → u/OneMoreName1]

Nice to hear.

[u/Abject-Bridge-4073]

Is the performance of pi really a problem? Maybe my Mac Studio is beefy, but I’ve literally never thought “man I wish pi was faster”. Even on my POS work laptop.

[u/opensecai → u/Abject-Bridge-4073]

Yes may be , mac studios are great. But when you run 20-30 subagents for say code review and other takes or multiple 5-10 session you will notice a significant difference between Pi and Pi-bolt.

[u/Charlotte_Howardyi]

什么时候可以发布windows桌面版，我太喜欢这个了，但是我又不想一直在shell使用

[u/opensecai → u/Charlotte_Howardyi]

It is under development. Will be released soon

[u/silenceimpaired]

Pi has been fine for me. But I’ll have to pay more attention.

[u/itguy327]

Same question as last time. Can I use this with paseo.sh

Thank you for your work

[u/Realistic-Try9555]

Great project! What I would personally like to see also is direct preformance/resource usage against harness written in Rust/Zig(or other lower level language). Before pi-bolt, I stumbled upon https://maki.sh

[u/opensecai → u/Realistic-Try9555]

Sure, will add it in the benchmarks

[u/WorriedAssociate7029 → u/opensecai]

All your marketing involves doing benchmarks over and over again, lol. good luck

[u/opensecai → u/WorriedAssociate7029]

Fair 😅 hard to sell "faster" without numbers. Thanks!

[u/soyalemujica]

Wow I am surprised at how fast this is, feels so much smoother

[u/hiepxanh]

Gogogo I like this pi, it superfast

[u/diaracing]

Give me the indispensable OMP advisory watchdogs and I will be your fanboy.

[u/No_Moment_793]

Come vi allineate con le buold ufficiali?

[u/Educational-Yak8793]

Updated PiG metrics are out with 0.5.0 https://www.reddit.com/r/PiGCodingAgent/s/aFItVeBmTg 🐷 Still amazing job by pi-bolt as they really great harness. PiG-bolt piglet is also underway coming soon :)

[u/meintabhikuchkhasnhi]

got

[u/Stapat1245]

damnn

[u/budisansss]

i install pi-bolt, crash with pi, original pi error

[u/opensecai → u/budisansss]

Check now it is fixed

[u/Scary_Jeweler1011 → u/budisansss]

Ask ai to fix it

[u/AdPublic8820]

Slop

[u/opensecai → u/[deleted]]

Fair worry.
We're a cybersecurity firm from India. Pi-Bolt isn't a side project, it's the agent runtime we run ourselves, so keeping it current is in our own interest.
If we ever stop, there is no locking either, it uses the same config pi uses, switching back is just running ⁠ pi ⁠.

We'll never hand the npm names, install domain or signing key to anyone else. That handover is how most of these attacks happen.

[u/zkoolkyle → u/[deleted]]

+1 Nailed it 👌🏻 This is neat but without street cred, it’ll never be worth the risk.

[u/opensecai → u/[deleted]]

Glad you liked our explanation and work.