Happy pi.dev user here, give it a try! I would say that's kind of the "vim experience" but for harnesses: has the minimum, if you want something more you extend it :)
Saying it gives "the minimum" is generous, it's pretty much useless out of the box. And did I say slow as well? I think pi is great if you're into spending your time managing your harness rather than using it. In that regard, it's more like neovim.
The idea is to make it fully autonomous so it is not really something that is meant to be constantly prompted and it is unlikely to fit most workflows but the idea is to make something that fits the future - not the present.
I am seriously thinking about adapting Kate with a fully opensource ai harness. it should be good enough for mac and linux for most devs. it already supports lsp server & has a established plugin infra so it should not really be any blockers. anybody wanna collab?
this class of spyware pretending to be ide makes me sick.
Nvim + Claude code. Or zed. Honestly basically every ide is adding agent harness features as their primary focus right now. Just throw a rock and you’ll hit something that will work for you. You can even just use emacs and have ai build harness features for you.
Happy pi.dev user here, give it a try! I would say that's kind of the "vim experience" but for harnesses: has the minimum, if you want something more you extend it :)
Saying it gives "the minimum" is generous, it's pretty much useless out of the box. And did I say slow as well? I think pi is great if you're into spending your time managing your harness rather than using it. In that regard, it's more like neovim.
> .. if you're into spending your time managing your harness ..
as is always the answer when this comes up about anything agent related :
save yourself the time and have the agent do it. Don't spend hours on something you don't want to do that it can - that's the point here.
I'm wondering who's going to buy pi!
(Edit sorry forgetting names, I mean who's going to buy Earendil). Good luck to Armin, he's done some good stuff.
Earendil did! https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/5/24/pi-oss/
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Theres several open source options you can use.
The highest github stars one is called `zed` another one i've heard about is `Cline`
theirs also a few that yc backed ones:
`Void`
`Continue`
`PearAI`
For what its worth the non yc ones have way more github stars but im sure the yc ones are good too. I think `Continue` is the biggest yc one.
I've used Cline for a year now and very happy with it. Fits my workflow really well
continue is eol after being acquired by cursor/spacex https://www.continue.dev/
and PearAI was just a fork of Continue with not much changed other than the license and removing the words continue.
Also OpenCode and Kilo seem popular as well.
At Poolside we have pool (https://github.com/poolsideai/pool), it runs in a terminal and you can use it with any Agent Client Protocol compatible agent (https://agentclientprotocol.com/get-started/agents).
Since you've asked, I am working on one but it is super early days so I am just posting it here for feedback.
https://zot.im
The idea is to make it fully autonomous so it is not really something that is meant to be constantly prompted and it is unlikely to fit most workflows but the idea is to make something that fits the future - not the present.
I've been pretty damn happy with codex and vscode.
Between the codex app, cli, and vscode extension there are options for most ways of working
Codex UI is great. It just make sense for an AI tool.
Been very impressed by the codex app tbh
I am seriously thinking about adapting Kate with a fully opensource ai harness. it should be good enough for mac and linux for most devs. it already supports lsp server & has a established plugin infra so it should not really be any blockers. anybody wanna collab?
this class of spyware pretending to be ide makes me sick.
Nvim + Claude code. Or zed. Honestly basically every ide is adding agent harness features as their primary focus right now. Just throw a rock and you’ll hit something that will work for you. You can even just use emacs and have ai build harness features for you.
I'm very curious what coding agent interfaces other HN users are using.
I run a bunch of Claude / Codex TUIs + vim in terminal tabs on i3 workspaces on Linux whch I know isn't the most common.
https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi
If you're open to using remote Linux VM's and a web-based interface, I quite like exe.dev and Shelley.
Paseo with opencode backing.
pi is for real engineers
vim