AITrustListAITrustList
Shawn H. avatar

Reviewed by Shawn H. — Founder, AITrustList

Last verified MethodologyAI tools are ranked by traffic signals, not paid placement.

Pi logo

Pi

Minimal, customizable terminal-based coding agent harness

CodingOpen Source
FreeVerified Sep 19, 2026

Pi is a minimal, MIT-licensed coding agent harness that supports 15+ LLM providers and lets you extend it with TypeScript extensions, skills, and packages.

Visit website
Pi alternatives
Screenshot 1

Pros & cons

Independently written by the AITrustList editorial team.

Pros

  • MIT-licensed open source with public GitHub repo and 50+ example extensions
  • Works with 15+ providers and hundreds of models, including local Ollama models
  • Highly extensible via TypeScript extensions, skills, prompt templates, and Pi packages
  • Tree-structured session history with bookmarks, filtering, HTML export, and gist sharing
  • Four modes (TUI, print/JSON, RPC, SDK) for terminal, scripting, and embedding use
  • Strong context-engineering controls including per-project AGENTS.md/SYSTEM.md and customizable compaction

+2 more pros not shown

Cons

  • No native MCP support out of the box (requires building an extension or package)
  • No built-in sub-agents, plan mode, or permission popups (must be built or installed)
  • No built-in background bash; relies on tmux for long-running shell tasks
  • Requires your own API keys or OAuth setup with a supported provider
  • Terminal-only experience with no GUI or dedicated mobile/web client
  • Minimal core means many common agent features require writing or installing extensions

+1 more con not shown

Pi alternatives

More Pi alternatives

Other products in the same task, ranked by popularity.

ChatGPT Codex
ChatGPT Codex
AI coding agent in ChatGPT for software engineering tasks
Problem solvingTask management
ChatGPT Codex
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot
AI pair programmer that coding across editor,CLI, and GitHub
Coding
GitHub Copilot
Cursor
Cursor
AI coding agent for building ambitious software
Coding
Cursor
OpenCode
OpenCode
Open source AI coding agent for terminal, IDE, and desktop
Coding
OpenCode
Google Antigravity
Google Antigravity
Next-gen agent platform for the agent-first era
CodingDevOps
Google Antigravity
Anthropic's Claude
Anthropic's Claude
AI assistant for problem solving, coding, and data analysis
Data AnalysisCoding
Anthropic's Claude

Pi Pricing

Pricing and commercial details available on the current listing.

Pricing model
Free
Pi
Open-source MIT-licensed terminal coding agent harness, free to install and use with your own provider API keys.
Free

About Pi

What it is, how to use it, and the full listing description.

What is Pi?

Pi is an open-source, terminal-based coding agent harness that lets developers run and customize an AI coding assistant in the terminal across many LLM providers.

How to use Pi?

Install Pi with curl, npm, pnpm, or bun, authenticate against your preferred LLM provider via API key or OAuth, and start an interactive session in your project directory. Customize behavior with AGENTS.md/SYSTEM.md files, extensions, skills, and prompt templates, or build your own features in TypeScript and bundle them as npm or git packages.

Core features of Pi

  • Minimal, customizable terminal-based coding agent harness
  • Support for 15+ LLM providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Azure, Bedrock, Mistral, Groq, Cerebras, xAI, Hugging Face, OpenRouter, Ollama, and more)
  • Tree-structured, shareable session history with HTML export and GitHub gist sharing
  • Context engineering via AGENTS.md, SYSTEM.md, skills, prompt templates, and auto-compaction
  • Four operating modes: interactive TUI, print/JSON, RPC over stdio, and embeddable SDK
  • Extensible with TypeScript extensions, skills, themes, and installable Pi packages

Target audience of Pi

DevelopersBackend DevelopersFrontend DevelopersDevOps EngineersAI Developers

Use cases of Pi

  • #1AI-assisted coding and refactoring directly from the terminal
  • #2Automating coding workflows in scripts via print/JSON or RPC mode
  • #3Embedding a coding agent into custom apps via the SDK
  • #4Building and sharing custom AI coding tools as Pi packages or extensions
  • #5Running local or self-hosted models via Ollama for private coding assistance

Pi is a minimal, terminal-based coding agent designed as a flexible harness you adapt to your workflows rather than the other way around. It ships with powerful defaults but deliberately omits features like sub-agents, plan mode, MCP, permission popups, built-in to-dos, and background bash, encouraging you (or Pi itself) to build them via TypeScript extensions.

Pi supports 15+ providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Azure, Bedrock, Mistral, Groq, Cerebras, xAI, Hugging Face, OpenRouter, and Ollama, with auth via API keys or OAuth. You can switch models mid-session with /model or Ctrl+L and add custom providers via models.json.

Sessions are stored as trees in a single file, navigable with /tree, with bookmarks, filtering, HTML export, and one-click GitHub gist sharing. Context engineering is core: a minimal system prompt, AGENTS.md/SYSTEM.md per-project instructions, auto-compaction, on-demand skills, Markdown prompt templates, and extensions that can inject or filter context for RAG and long-term memory.

Pi runs in four modes: an interactive TUI, print/JSON for scripts and event streams, RPC over stdin/stdout for non-Node integrations, and an SDK for embedding. It installs via curl, npm, pnpm, or bun, is MIT licensed, and is developed by Earendil Inc. with a community on Discord and 50+ example extensions.

Pi Website Traffic Analysis

Traffic and engagement metrics for pi.dev.

Visit Over Time

Pi had 2.1M monthly visits in the latest recorded month. It is currently tracked in the Coding category on AITrustList.

Monthly Visits2.1M
Avg. Visit Duration03:34
Page per Visit3.43
Bounce Rate49.26%
Sep 2025 - Aug 2026 All Traffic

Geography

Top 5 Regions

📍China
32.71%
📍United States
13.75%
📍Germany
4.90%
📍Singapore
4.70%
📍Italy
2.89%
Sep 2025 - Aug 2026 Desktop Only

Traffic Sources

Organic Search
45.32%
Direct
43.96%
Referrals
7.47%
Organic Social
2.27%
GenAI
0.73%
Mail
0.21%
Display Ads
0.04%
Affiliate
0.00%
Paid Search
0.00%
Paid Social
0.00%
Sep 2025 - Aug 2026 Worldwide Desktop Only

AI Referral Traffic

ChatGPT
58.3%
Perplexity AI
16.5%
Google Gemini
2.4%
Sep 2025 - Aug 2026 AI Engine Share Trends

Top Keywords

KeywordTrafficCost Per Click
pi agent237.7K$ 2.80
pi1.5M$ 2.05
pi harness44.5K$ 3.96
pi coding agent36.4K$ 3.67
pi dev8.4K$ 3.88

Customer Reviews

☆☆☆☆☆

0.00 out of 5

Based on 0 reviews

★★★★★
0
★★★★☆
0
★★★☆☆
0
★★☆☆☆
0
★☆☆☆☆
0

No published reviews yet.

FAQ from Pi

Questions and answers included with this listing.

Is Pi open source?

Yes. Pi is released under the MIT License, with its source code publicly available at https://github.com/earendil-works/pi.

Which LLM providers does Pi support?

Pi supports 15+ providers including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Azure, Bedrock, Mistral, Groq, Cerebras, xAI, Hugging Face, Kimi For Coding, NVIDIA, OpenRouter, and Ollama, with custom providers via models.json.

How do I install Pi?

You can install Pi via a one-line curl or PowerShell installer, or globally with npm, pnpm, or bun using @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent.

Does Pi have features like MCP, sub-agents, or plan mode?

Not by default. Pi deliberately omits MCP, sub-agents, plan mode, permission popups, built-in to-dos, and background bash, but each can be added via extensions, skills, or third-party Pi packages.

What are the operating modes of Pi?

Pi runs in four modes: an interactive TUI, print/JSON for scripts and event streams, RPC over stdin/stdout, and an SDK for embedding Pi in other applications.