Some people are already tired of increasingly heavy tools like Claude Code or Cursor, where more and more features are unnecessary, prompts are massive, and everything is hidden.

Pi Agent
https://shittycodingagent.ai/ https://pi.dev/
A super-minimalist open-source AI coding agent for the terminal — just 4 basic tools: read, write, edit, bash. Everything else is handled via extensions. It works as a CLI, headless, RPC, or SDK — which is why Pi is "under the hood" of OpenClaw.

Tree-based sessions — you can branch out, go back, and export to HTML. Full transparency — you can see everything that is happening.

Pi allows connecting various LLM providers. Settings are stored in ~/.pi/agent/ (globally) or .pi/ (locally in the project). Key files: settings.json for general parameters and files like SYSTEM.md for custom prompts. Authentication can be done in two ways: via subscription (OAuth/login) or via API key.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boSPk_Ig4gU

You can set up and use Pi Coding Agent locally for free via Ollama.

How the author built it
https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46844822
Without built-in planning modes, background bash, sub-agents, or MCP. The agent avoids hidden injections from other harnesses, ensuring full observability of interactions. It avoids frequent prompt/tool changes (unlike Claude Code) that break workflows.

5–10× longer context windows thanks to the minimal prompt, with the ability to change the model mid-session.

It works with unlimited access to the file system and commands, recognizing that guardrails are often ineffective and productive work requires full capabilities. The "YOLO mode" scares Hacker News commenters: risks of exfiltration, prompt injection, accidental database deletion, etc. Some suggest chroot / containers / VMs, while others argue that sandboxing in Codex is "security theater."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47143754
Users write that Pi provides a "level of control not seen before." The RPC/headless mode is great for integrations. There is an ecosystem of forks and extensions — the "oh-my-pi" project (https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi) is a notable "batteries-included" version, though it is said to often break tools after updates.

Possible Anthropic ban: there are warnings about the risk of account suspension for using alternative clients (similar to OpenCode).

#piagent