Pi: The Minimal Agent for REAL Devs

Pi (pi.dev / shittycodingagent.ai) is a minimal, open-source, model-agnostic CLI coding agent built by Mario Zechner (creator of libGDX) as a reaction to bloated tools like Claude Code and OpenCode. Its philosophy is radical minimalism: no MCP, no sub-agents, no plan mode, no permission pop-ups — just a lean loop on top of your chosen model. Key features include nonlinear session branching (/tree), session gists, inline bash commands, prompt templates as slash commands, and an extensible package system. The author walks through installation, provider setup (including local Ollama), context management tips, and practical usage patterns, concluding that Pi's appeal lies in what it deliberately omits rather than what it includes.