Pi setup and comparison with OpenCode and Claude Code

Pi is a terminal coding assistant built around a small core that users can extend. The speaker contrasts its approach with Claude Code and OpenCode, arguing that their extra features can complicate everyday work. These are the speaker's assessments, rather than measured comparisons of reliability or speed.

The walkthrough covers installation with npm, provider login and API key configuration. The speaker says Pi supports Ollama and other local providers, making it relevant to a local LLM workflow, though the video does not demonstrate a local model setup or give hardware requirements. Pi's default interface omits MCP support, subagents, plan mode and approval prompts; users can add functionality through extensions.

Session management gets substantial attention. The speaker demonstrates branching from earlier messages, inspecting conversation history with /tree and exporting sessions as searchable HTML or a private GitHub gist. Other examples include opening prompts in an editor with Control-G, running shell commands with an exclamation mark and resuming with pi -r. Image input causes some confusion, but supplying an image path works in the speaker's account.

The final section covers slash-command prompt templates, package installation and one-shot queries with -p. The speaker also describes using Pi on a home server with instructions in a Markdown file and tmux for additional sessions.