Every few weeks Pi hits #1 here and I quietly grumble "mine does that too, but with lovely graphics.", so I'm saying it out loud: <a href="https://github.com/juggler-ai/juggler" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/juggler-ai/juggler
Like Pi, it's plugins all the way down, provider-agnostic, minimal system prompts, threaded sub-agents, code-mode, multi-client remote sessions, worktrees, a context window you can actually see and edit, etc etc
Where Pi is way ahead is the plugin ecosystem, and that takes people, which is hard to get amid the current deluge of agent action. So if there's any spare oxygen trailing off this thread, I'd love any Pi-heads who fancy a bit of GUI action to come and kick the tyres..
This project looks great, well done, BUT it seems very odd to be "grumbling" about Pi when you're explicitly targeting a separate audience (GUI users).
There are other GUI tools like Juggler that are quite popular, like cmux, that it seems better placed as an alternative to.
Thanks! My grumbling is really just that the sheer amount of noise and churn in this area at the moment is making it hard to get any attention, despite there being so many millions of potential users out there. Unlike many of the others, I'm just one bloke, not a VC-funded outfit with a marketing budget!
It looks like a good system, great if it works for you - but we now live in a period where I could build a similar tool to handle MY preferences in a weekend if I wanted to.
And, it would almost be EASIER than learning to use a new tool. I prefer PI because I didn't want batteries included in the terminal. Any decisions about what a user might want is a decision made on the user's behalf that dilute that core.
Juggler looks good - not personally for me. But that's OK, it's got 675 stars and a bunch of forks. That's attention, no?
I think people vastly overestimate how hard it is to get a tool right even in the age of AI. Yes, it's very easy to get a throwaway tool done in a session. For anything above trivial complexity (like a coding harness) you will immediately notice warts with it.
It's true: with proper planning, thought, and focus, you might be able to generate enough code in one weekend to create a tool that is at parity with something like Pi - but chances are the amount of focus, planning, and thought is going to be greater than one weekend worth. And I don't know about you - but I don't really want to spend my weekend building a coding harness, I have other ideas and projects I'd rather execute.
Yes indeed. In the case of juggler, if you check my CV you'll see that I'm very far from being a vibe coder - I've been shipping hugely complex products for 30 years, I've written frameworks, entire UI libraries, audio libraries, a DAW, a couple of compilers.. But this took me about a year to get right. I must have re-architected the whole thing more than 10 times, it took every bit of my experience to not screw up the data model. It's actually one of the most difficult and interesting projects I've done. So yes, if you can get claude to churn out a juggler-like app in a weekend, it probably ripped off the source code!
julesrms · · focus · HN ↗
Like Pi, it's plugins all the way down, provider-agnostic, minimal system prompts, threaded sub-agents, code-mode, multi-client remote sessions, worktrees, a context window you can actually see and edit, etc etc
Where Pi is way ahead is the plugin ecosystem, and that takes people, which is hard to get amid the current deluge of agent action. So if there's any spare oxygen trailing off this thread, I'd love any Pi-heads who fancy a bit of GUI action to come and kick the tyres..
lucideer · · focus · HN ↗
This project looks great, well done, BUT it seems very odd to be "grumbling" about Pi when you're explicitly targeting a separate audience (GUI users).
There are other GUI tools like Juggler that are quite popular, like cmux, that it seems better placed as an alternative to.
julesrms · · focus · HN ↗
NichoPaolucci · · focus · HN ↗
It looks like a good system, great if it works for you - but we now live in a period where I could build a similar tool to handle MY preferences in a weekend if I wanted to.
And, it would almost be EASIER than learning to use a new tool. I prefer PI because I didn't want batteries included in the terminal. Any decisions about what a user might want is a decision made on the user's behalf that dilute that core.
Juggler looks good - not personally for me. But that's OK, it's got 675 stars and a bunch of forks. That's attention, no?
boredtofears · · focus · HN ↗
It's true: with proper planning, thought, and focus, you might be able to generate enough code in one weekend to create a tool that is at parity with something like Pi - but chances are the amount of focus, planning, and thought is going to be greater than one weekend worth. And I don't know about you - but I don't really want to spend my weekend building a coding harness, I have other ideas and projects I'd rather execute.
julesrms · · focus · HN ↗