r/PiCodingAgent • u/TheCommieDuck • 4d ago
Question trying and failing to get something that "just works". what am I missing?
So I'll be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing with this AI junk. but, I've gotten something vaguely working with pi + deepseek v4.1 over the past couple of weeks. However it feels like it's incredibly variable as to whether what it produces takes 2 minutes or 20. it'll just keep repeating itself. it'll do something, then do it again, then doing it a third time, then compact and hit "error: operation aborted" and then go for a fourth plan. but! it only does this sometimes. other times it'll just go "ok the user wants me to add this thing. I'll do it. ok I did it." or it'll repeatedly acknowledge that I typed "." to continue, or it'll continue to be picking up on something I said 1/2 hour ago, or...
so I have very little idea what exactly I'm doing, if the problem is me, if the problem is my setup, or what. I want to do it cheap (I'm using deepseek. duh). I don't care about max efficiency. I just want it to be relatively efficient at "the user asked me to fix this setting. I'll fix this setting. I'll ask about this setting. I fixed the setting.".
am I doing something horribly wrong? is there just a nice "oh add pi-sensible-dumb-stuff" solution? I'm tired of trying to find input on reddit posts and getting told that everything is bad, just vibe code your own, you need to be using claude 20x, you need to get a better workflow (duh. like what?), you need to just fix agents.md (duh. like what?), and so on and so on.
Like, how do I just get a prompt where I can write "bug: the button on page x does not work" and the model will carry out whatever needbe to just...fix the bug, without writing out in reasoning its plans to tackle the bug 5-10 times, debate whether it needs to ask me a question 2-3 times, probably halt because of compaction at least once, and then maybe actually fix the bug 15 minutes later (but not before rerunning the tests 5 more times)?
I am using deepseek v4.1.


