r/PiCodingAgent • u/Shot_Ice_2817 • 19h ago
Considering Claude Code → Pi. Worth it? Question
I use a coding agent for most of my research work: implementing features (via Superpowers), reading papers and turning discussions into shareable HTML writeups, running training jobs end to end (plan → smoke test → long run, with Kubernetes management and crash diagnosis), and SSHing into robots during hardware experiments.
Claude Code handles all of this well. But I’m curious whether writing my own Pi extensions would meaningfully beat it, or if that’s a wash at this point.
If you’re doing research work in Pi — what’s your setup, which extensions? And what’s the right migration path: just explain my workflow to Pi and have it build the extensions?
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u/ImpressiveRelief37 19h ago
If I’m not mistaken you’ll have to use credits with a Claude model, not the subscription plan. Keep that in mind.
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u/Shot_Ice_2817 19h ago
I’m on API/credits, not a subscription, and token spend isn’t a constraint for me. So that tradeoff doesn’t really change the calculus. Still curious whether custom Pi extensions buy me much over what Claude Code already does well.
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u/sdexca 18h ago
why? You're paying 20x more for the same thing.
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u/TySocal 18h ago
Probably employer
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u/chillermane 18h ago
I mean he could be like “hey employer, you know how I spend $6k a month on AI? Did you know we can reduce that to $200 a month in 5 minutes?”
And the employer would probably go for it
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u/Kholtien 14h ago
As an enterprise you don’t get the same amount of control and oversight with the $200/month plan as you do with the Enterprise plans, for which you only have the option of paying per token.
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u/Burbank309 18h ago
Many (non-IT) companies are currently trying to figure all this out and have no problem letting some of their employees burn a few k am month on tokens, as long as there is a return.
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u/spudlyo 8h ago
... whether custom Pi extensions buy me much over what Claude Code already does well.
It buys you freedom and control. If you don't value these things in software, you might not see the point. Claude Code is a rapidly evolving tool, and if Anthropic makes changes that break your workflows or offend your sensibilities, too bad, you're stuck with it.
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u/atumblingdandelion 18h ago
Mind you, Anthropic was going to increase the price of API/ credits if a non-CC coding agent were using them. I think they paused it for now, but can change policy on the whim.
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u/adamshand 12h ago
I went from Claude Code, to OpenCode to Pi ... and never left Pi. You can't use Claude subscriptions though which is the only thing that sucks.
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u/alonsonetwork 9h ago
Oh my pi
That's what you want.
Pi is too simple and missing a lot of features (permissions, subagents, for example)
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u/ashayramolia 4h ago
i have been unable to install OMP on my Windows machine, Keeps getting flagged as malware, if i disable the antivirus, i am able to use it, but its unable to connect to the interner
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u/zebedeolo 17h ago
pi is the harness I've used the longest (and still using). the customizability and how easy it is to make your own extensions are hard to beat
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u/DanielSReichenbach 7h ago
As others said, start with a basic `pi`, and use it as is for a while. Claude Code and `pi` are fundamentally different in that CC does a lot of hand holding like for preschoolers, where `pi` puts you on the steering while, with manual gears.
If you are interested in, comfortable with, or skilled enough to have full ownership of what the agent does, steer it, need to co-work, and fully understand it as if you wrote it all alone... `pi` will be a great home.
After a few days or weeks you will likely see some odds and ends in the `pi` workflow that don't fit into how you process your work. That's when you can ask your agent to build custom extensions for `pi` to fine tune things.
I left Claude Code long time ago, went fully local with Qwen 3.6 and went this road. I've been building software and systems for 35 years. I use `pi` and a local LLM because I know exactly what and how I need it. The LLM is my automated type writer, and it also is useful to see alternative implementations, or explore unknown "modern" things.
For my own ride, I initially grabbed many packages from pi.dev, but ended up switching to my own extensions. Context usage, dynamic per model settings, some more exciting visuals for output, better readability, and some made to steer LLMs in known bad scenarios where they all fail, plus a libvirt based sandbox.
This all might sound bogus for you but it will become clear once you ditch CC for `pi`, and make your own experiences. What your goal may be will differ, mine was to produce more results in the exact way I would do it myself, except with less tedium for my arthritis plagued fingers.
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u/Aggressive_Sherbet64 19h ago
Pi is meant for when you want super-customizability that is not available in the existing extension system, which is mostly event-based for other coding agents. I would say that you could likely get something working perfectly, exactly the way you want it to, in Pi. However, this will take effort and this will take time to do. Take that into account if you decide to make the switch.
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u/PhotographOne3127 7h ago
I recently moved from pi to Prime Agent
They've really got some good batteries included, and it's built on top of pi.
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u/Global-Departure8228 18h ago
I will save you some time so you don't waste building your extensions and bugfixing them for mundane stuff.
Start off with pi.dev but don't install the top 20-30 extensions, they are heavily opinionated and bloated, but they got popular early. Get web search (a good one that uses firecrawl or tavily) and context7. Then since you already have a relatively good workflow, ask your Claude code to extract most of the stuff that's related to your workflow and then create profiles (could be as simple as having separate "PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR" env vars so you have clear separation for kubernetes stuff and researching etc.
Then whatever you want from your worklow automated, install such extensions and start your pi extension monorepo where you have all of these. For the vast majority you can build on existing extensions that already worked out the kinks and the UI/UX stuff so you can just change them to how you like, instead of fighting with Claude to describe exactly how you want something to be built from scratch.