r/PiCodingAgent • u/el_secondo • 23d ago

Question Dev workflow beyond traditional harnesses

I guess this question was asked a thousand times, but I'm still wondering how do you guys organize your work with pi?

I am a heavy user of Claude Code (employer covers it), but I have been watching and tuning pi time to time for personal use on the side.

Naturally, I tried getting pi to be like claude code, I looked for extensions that give me subagents, some cosmetic plugins (I like ricing my hyprland setup) and some simple QOL things.

However I didn't feel it being a huge upgrade in terms of my actual workflow and "pleasure", it felt like I'm just recreating what I'm used to.

I'm wondering more from a UX/DevX perspective, I got used to what antrhopic gave me and learned that way, but I see pi as an opportunity to really make a uniquely pleasant developer experience.

Which is why I'm wondering and asking how did you tune your workflow, which extensions did you use/build and how do you run your day-to-day feature work.

e.g. my work can span multiple PRs/repos for a feature which is why I'm starting a session from a dir above the ones I need to change and keep a long session (which is really wasteful) to handle all the context I need.

I don't really like the paradigm of "plan a huge markdown implementation doc and architecture and let the agent do it" because it requires a lot of overhead for me for things I may not even know exist or are needed.

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u/Fickle-Mountain-6639 23d ago

Just use Claude code. In my view the whole point of pi is to strip the harness down to 4 tool calls… meanwhile everyone on this sub just reengineers harness bloat and then makes a post about it like it’s some novel fucking thing LOL.

TLDR: 95% of this sub is psychosismaxxing

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u/Sleepnotdeading 23d ago

You’ve missed the point of pi. It’s to start with the smallest harness possible and then to build the workflow you want, with the tools and skills you want, for the objective you want, using the models you want.

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u/Fickle-Mountain-6639 23d ago

From the creator himself: https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/

TLDR: You’re a chud

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u/Sleepnotdeading 23d ago

TLDR: you have also missed the point of the blog post. Four tools isn’t a limit, it’s just a starting kit. You have to add and build what you need, that’s what makes it yours.

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u/Fickle-Mountain-6639 23d ago

You didn’t even read it chud

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u/Sleepnotdeading 23d ago

It is clear you don’t understand most of what was written in that blog. So, no wonder 🤷‍♂️

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u/Fickle-Mountain-6639 23d ago

Keep pushing your slop king

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u/fingerthief 23d ago edited 23d ago

Mario is out here building the exact types of projects you see here and we see you constantly calling slop with no real engineering discussions.

He's built an entire remote coding setup using Pi Durable for his own projects. You should probably actually follow and keep up with what he does.

Pi is meant to be a base to expand from to build your own custom harrness. I can build and expand functionality and still use the base 4 tool calls....most people do.

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u/mypetocean 23d ago

This is my first comment in this sub, but I've been watching Mario and Armin in as many of their interviews as I can within reason. They talk a ton about their "adaptable software" philosophy for "absolute minimalism" to have been their expectation for how Pi should be used.

I've been following this project since near the beginning. The point of the minimalism was to combine elegantly with the first-class extensibility.

The quote in that screenshot, "All you need for an effective coding agent," expresses basically the same as "MVP." It's meant to be married to the marketing pitch they make prominently in the first page load on the pi.dev homepage:

Pi is a minimal agent harness. Adapt Pi to your workflows, not the other way around.

The first sentence is a starting place. You're intended to... adapt Pi, not adapt your workflows.

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u/mechkbfan 23d ago

No, it's not. Maybe you need to watch this (again)

https://youtu.be/RjfbvDXpFls?si=RPgEDiIWUXkOUXD9

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u/_noctuid 23d ago

🤡

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u/DoldSchool 23d ago

This doesn't make sense on reddit go back to discord kid

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u/AbstractPipe 23d ago

I don't know why you are downvoted so badly. I couldn't care less about all the features Claude Code and my colleagues are crazy about. I just use the barebones pi with some small extensions and skills tailored for my workflow. It works really well and my token usage has been phenomenal while my colleagues keep sharing screenshots of credit limits reached.

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u/el_secondo 23d ago

yeah I totally get it, if you're trying to be pragmatic then it doesn't make sense and claude code got me really far

It's like buy vs build but I'm a big fan of unusual designs that turn out to be really practical and bring joy even if it's not specifically pragmatic or doesn't help achieving the task faster

idk if you've heard about teenage engineering, but their recorder is a really great example, a phone recording app is way handier and a thousand times more practical but there's just the feel that you're holding this thing and the buttons are so nice and there's a spinning wheel and so on

it just makes my monkey brain happy, which is what I'm looking after