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Pi - Open-Source Coding Agent

May 13, 2026
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An open-source coding agent rivaling claude code and openai codex.
Vanilla Pi is bare bones and should be configured via extensions - or start with a preconfigured version like oh-my-pi (though oh-my-pi can feel bloated compared to vanilla Pi with its long system prompt, many features and tools).

Install

$ npm install -g @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent

Then run: $ pi
And add your provider with: /model

Customize Pi

Prompts

~/.pi/agent/SYSTEM.md : overwrites the global Pi system prompt (be careful)
~/.pi/agent/APPEND_SYSTEM.md : appends to the global Pi system prompt

Pi loads AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md at startup from:

  • ~/.pi/agent/AGENTS.md for global instructions
  • parent directories, walking up from the current working directory
  • the current directory

Packages

Install extensions (packages) from the pi packages marketplace (review code before you use them): https://pi.dev/packages

Your custom extensions live in: $home/.pi/agent/extensions
Installed extensions (packages) are in: TODO

Skills

Skills are useful to dynamically load relevant documents / tools into the prompt context to solve advanced tasks / use pre-defined complex workflows.

Located in $home/.agents/skills

Useful packages to manage skills:

References

#coding #tutorial #AI