Sigh, looks like Pi's days as a nice minimal agent TUI are numbered. I guess no third-party offering can fight that entropy for long and I'll just have to polish up one of my toy projects for personal use.
I've read this a bunch of times around socials now these past days and I'd really like to understand what exactly indicates that the minimal agent TUI days are numbered for Pi?
I did not read this when I added support for AGENTS.md, skills, llama.cpp, extensions, alt TUI mode, mid-convo system messages and tool set changes to preserve KV cache, image model support, and everything else I added since November last year.
Codemode and MCP support are the latest additions. We follow what the models are trained on. E.g. the GPT family of models is actually trained on codemode for parallel tool calls now. The MCP spec has gotten a major update recently that makes it much less bad than it used to be in the past 24 months. Combined with codemode, it is now passable, so it got added to pi.
All of these features are still entirely optional and the only thing I could think of that could be considered "bloat" is the additional few megabytes for the QuickJS WASM blob.
So, I mean this in earenst and absolutely not combative: could you explain what exactly flips the switch between "pi is minimal" and "pi is not minimal"?
Fullscreen mode as the default is a big one, I prefer my agent harness to be a CLI rather than a TUI and in fact my personal one doesn't even try to wrap text. Pure CLI output model.
That said I also dislike many of those other changes and would prefer a hypothetical version of Pi which didn't have them, so this is in some sense just me looking up at the sound of a v1.0 release and realizing "oh hey, I don't really like the direction this has been trending for a while"
Multiple answers. Windows Terminal users constantly had problems because WT is ... not great. Fullscreen mode fixes that. This also applies to some other lesser used terminals.
I wanted the out of the box experience to be smoother for more people, so made it the default. Scrollback mode will stay though for users who prefer it.
> and would prefer a hypothetical version of Pi which didn't have them
If only there was some way to... ah no time to be snarky. It's open source and MIT licensed and you're in a thread discussing AI coding agents.
Sounds to me like things people say just to have something to say. True, it is good to listen to feedback but feedback without evidence is only going to waste your time.
Thanks for all your hard work and keep going in the direction that makes sense to you!
Well, I'm happy. Thanks for the new harness, ripping out the guts of piclaw to use it, and also flipped a few other small tools to pi-durable, which is nicely streamlined.
I can't for the life of me figure out why people would think pi is bloated.
Fullscreen mode is my only real gripe. That kind of terminal behaviour is exactly what I was trying to get away from. My work's agent (that I use Pi to replace) does this and it is annoying as all get out... but I haven't tried yours yet, so we will see. Hopefully your implementation is better!
wgd · · focus · HN ↗
badlogic · · focus · HN ↗
I did not read this when I added support for AGENTS.md, skills, llama.cpp, extensions, alt TUI mode, mid-convo system messages and tool set changes to preserve KV cache, image model support, and everything else I added since November last year.
Codemode and MCP support are the latest additions. We follow what the models are trained on. E.g. the GPT family of models is actually trained on codemode for parallel tool calls now. The MCP spec has gotten a major update recently that makes it much less bad than it used to be in the past 24 months. Combined with codemode, it is now passable, so it got added to pi.
All of these features are still entirely optional and the only thing I could think of that could be considered "bloat" is the additional few megabytes for the QuickJS WASM blob.
So, I mean this in earenst and absolutely not combative: could you explain what exactly flips the switch between "pi is minimal" and "pi is not minimal"?
wgd · · focus · HN ↗
That said I also dislike many of those other changes and would prefer a hypothetical version of Pi which didn't have them, so this is in some sense just me looking up at the sound of a v1.0 release and realizing "oh hey, I don't really like the direction this has been trending for a while"
badlogic · · focus · HN ↗
mijoharas · · focus · HN ↗
The codemode stuff/mcp has been explained to death at this point but I haven't seen anything around fullscreen.
(I don't have strong feelings either way, just curious)
badlogic · · focus · HN ↗
I wanted the out of the box experience to be smoother for more people, so made it the default. Scrollback mode will stay though for users who prefer it.
steezeburger · · focus · HN ↗
If only there was some way to... ah no time to be snarky. It's open source and MIT licensed and you're in a thread discussing AI coding agents.
realty_geek · · focus · HN ↗
Sounds to me like things people say just to have something to say. True, it is good to listen to feedback but feedback without evidence is only going to waste your time.
Thanks for all your hard work and keep going in the direction that makes sense to you!
rcarmo · · focus · HN ↗
I can't for the life of me figure out why people would think pi is bloated.
girvo · · focus · HN ↗
badlogic · · focus · HN ↗
it's still there and won't get removed.
girvo · · focus · HN ↗
capocasa · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://3code.capocasa.dev" rel="nofollow">https://3code.capocasa.dev
I believe software can be done- with incremental improvement and keeping the foundation, like vim. That's the 3code trajectory.
New fun ideas go into seperate tools, possibly ones 3code (or other minimal agents) can call, but the core stays lean.