Pi has the best code out of all coding agents. The only problem is it’s not as fully featured and some of its modules should be factored out into their own code base.
We built our first version of our in-app agent with opencode, but we're probably going to switch to Pi. Fundamentally, Pi is the shape of the thing that should exist, and it's awesome to see that it works. Very satisfying to my engineering brain. Been having fun with ohmypi as my personal harness, but going to switch over to pi soon and just mess around with it until it works the way I want. The idea of completely personalized software is so cool and now that it's finally possible I am having so much fun.
Having tried all the coding harnesses, I find that using Pi is exactly like using Emacs. For anything you want to build you can ask your agent and it will build it. There's tons of existing code to help you configure it. At the same time half the code is buggy, UI elements will try to overlap one another, and you'll periodically get crashes.
If you're willing to put in the work to master the learning curve and push through the issues, it can be a great tool: https://i.sstatic.net/7Cu9Z.jpg
I realised how use case dependent harness behaviour is when I tried to use my customised-for-a-side-project pi config at work and realised I needed to tweak it significantly to be useful - I would not be surprised if tools like Claude Code needing to be all things for all people is hurting their peak usefulness.
Literally every AI project ends up getting monetized even (read: especially) if it starts as open source. It's only a matter of time before π's enshittification kicks in.
Why is this relevant though? This project is so minimal that forking it at any point since it started “mainstreaming” and implementing any functionality that came after would have been utterly trivial.
If you're willing to put in the work to master the learning curve and push through the issues, it can be a great tool: https://i.sstatic.net/7Cu9Z.jpg
I realised how use case dependent harness behaviour is when I tried to use my customised-for-a-side-project pi config at work and realised I needed to tweak it significantly to be useful - I would not be surprised if tools like Claude Code needing to be all things for all people is hurting their peak usefulness.