Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage • Hacker News Board

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#211

Post by intothemild » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC

bacteria wrote: post #158

intothemild wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really really like pi. But I agree with you, it's biggest weakness is that for a real long time the tagline of it was "there are many harnesses, this one is MINE" (That being Mario's) I have a lot of respect for Mario and his team, but there's things like you've pointed out that deviate from standards, and other issues that I've seen get posted, only to get knocked down by the team as WON'T FIX because, even though…

Could you share some of the ecosystem/plugins/workflows you're using with Pi?

Sure, I use this, as pretty much my only plugin, I also have one for web-search on top of this. https://github.com/danielcherubini/pi-archimedes

as for workflows, its all skills/agents based, here's my dotagents folder

https://github.com/danielcherubini/dotagents

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#212

Post by TacticalCoder » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC

archargelod wrote: post #209

Sorry for negativity, but it wouldn't hurt to put some qualifier in the title, like, "Pi agent". So people, not interested in that theme can avoid your article. Thank you. I was expecting an article about Pi constant or maybe raspberry Pi computer. "My Disappointment Is Immeasurable And My Day Is Ruined!"

I'm very excited about pi.dev but naming it Pi when there are people like me who've got seven Raspberry Pi around is just... Confusing.

To me there's pi, the constant. Then there's "a pi": a Raspberry Pi. Now there's "pi, the agent" too.

It gets confusing.

Especially if you use pi on a Pi to write code that uses pi.

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#213

Post by TacticalCoder » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:42 PM UTC

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

pi is in YOLO mode by default. What the heck do you care if it's respecting XDG or not: this thing is not meant to be run in your main user directory with access to your secrets, bank accounts, emails, etc.

I couldn't care less about something that's meant to be run/discarded/re-created in a VM (or microVM or container) at will respecting XDG or not.

Why could you care less?

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#214

Post by mft_ » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:45 PM UTC

v3gas wrote: post #201

mft_ wrote: post #139

I’m going to go against the grain and say that Pi is a little too minimal by default. The emacs comparison is interesting, but default Pi is like emacs that can load files but you’ve got to extend it manually to save or search within a file. I’d argue that there’s a minimal set of functions that a coding harness needs to just enable a model to get stuff done, and they shouldn’t be an extra effort to set up. (Oh-my-pi…

What is that set of functions for you?

I can't offer a definitive list. But some/all of web access, web search, sub-agents, plan, goals, looping, and maybe a to-do list.

I'd suggest the default should be anything that makes the model more efficient or effective to a reasonable current level.

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#215

Post by vinhnx » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

I'm building roughly this in Rust: single binary, XDG-native, with Landlock/seccomp, scoped filesystem access, default-deny egress, and policy-based approvals. https://github.com/vinhnx/VTCode

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#216

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:50 PM UTC

rullopat wrote: post #182

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

I don't get the XDG appeal of having all the data of an app scattered all over the home dir when I can just have a .dir of an app with everything inside.

[deleted]

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#217

Post by Systemerror7A69 » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:52 PM UTC

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

I've absolutely had the same experience. Pi has been praised a lot, people speaking so highly of it's code quality.

And then I installed it and found all the problems you mention. Not only that but I read Github Issues about the XDG problem and was a bit taken aback by the reaction of the developer.

It's one of the best agents I have used so far but I'm still looking for a very lightweight, token efficient agent NOT written in a JS framework and which respects XDG

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#218

Post by vinhnx » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

Small model-facing surface, more responsibility in the harness. I'm exploring that tradeoff in Rust with VT Code: https://github.com/vinhnx/VTCode

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#219

Post by rescbr » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:01 PM UTC

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

I'm using maki (https://maki.sh), it has 1, 2 and 3.

Re: Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage

#220

Post by ChaseRensberger » Wed, Aug 05, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

paldepind2 wrote: post #130

Lots of praise for Pi in this thread, so I'll offer up a diverging opinion. Given all the hype, I was a bit underwhelmed by Pi. It definitely has some good ideas around customization, but it annoyed me in many little ways. For a program that's minimal it sure takes a long time to start up, the standard C-p and C-n bindings don't work, it doesn't follow the XDG Base Directory Specification and just pollutes my $HOME d…

Not exactly what youre looking for but im working on a lot of these ideas with https://wingman.actor