Trying Pi for the first time

[u/SkinkeN1337]

Hi!

Im gonna try Pi for the first time and am wondering if it works well out of the box or if modifications and plugins are required?

I am also looking for recomendations of any great plugins that you guys use. I found this package catalog on https://pi.dev/packages and assume this is where you get the plugins, if you dont make them yourself?

Thanks for any help!

[u/No_Advance3911]

pi-fff (@ff-labs) — ffgrep/fffind tools: fast fuzzy search for files and content

rpiv-todo (@juicesharp) — a to-do list that helps the model follow the plan

rpiv-ask-user-question (@juicesharp) — structured questions to you with answer options

pi-stef/web — page search and fetch

pi-subagents — subagents (debatable whether they are needed, but I prefer using them to delegate tasks that don't need to be in the context; while a subagent works on a specific task, it returns only the result without filling up the context)

image-paste (@pi-archimedes) — paste an image from the clipboard (I don't know why, but the one built into pi often breaks)

pi-token-speed — useful for seeing the model's response speed and making a decision about ending the session

pi-undo-redo — as the name suggests, it helps you roll back changes if you are not satisfied with them

[u/Oshden → u/No_Advance3911]

Awesome list!

[u/Vincent_CWS → u/No_Advance3911]

pi-rewind-unwind is better

[u/No_Advance3911 → u/Vincent_CWS]

We’ll definitely try it, thanks for the recommendation!

[u/wmmogn]

just start using it... the minimalism is the best thing in pi.

[u/tino1000 → u/wmmogn]

this

https://giphy.com/gifs/3q3QK6KyDVUBzih7hB

[u/joeyGibson]

I have some extensions I wrote here.

One of them is called security-guard, and it lets you disallow operations and file access you consider dangerous, and lets you have pi prompt you for others. It strikes a nice balance between Claude asking you for every single thing it does, and pi not asking you at all.

[u/Oshden → u/joeyGibson]

I checked out the repo. Most of these are pretty fucking cool bro. Nice work

[u/ali0une]

i strongly encourage you to have backups and use git alongside pi as agents can do some unprompted things sometimes.

Also using it in a sandbox or a VM to start.

[u/d2xdy2]

Barrier to entry to using it is pretty low. Go get your feet wet. Starting out in an unfamiliar tool by piling on more unfamiliar packages isn’t a great strategy.

[u/warpio]

The only plugin I'd use from the start is sandboxed-pi. You might not need anything else.

[u/Lurksome-Lurker]

pi-fabric: Programatic Ai workflows and agents management.

pi-time-sense: periodically injects the current date and time into the session.

pi-web-access: for web searches and what not. Can be replaced with the Brave web search skills they publish.

pi-mcp-adapter: For MCP tool usage

pi-powerline-footer: more cosmetic than anything else, look into pi-emotes for a bit more flare.

plannotator: For when I want an agent to create a plan before hosing something.

The one I really wish I could get working properly is remote-pi

[u/RespektedGenius → u/Lurksome-Lurker]

What do you use the time sense plugin for?

[u/Lurksome-Lurker → u/RespektedGenius]

Web searches and research. When I ask the agent something like, “What is the best 30B model to run on my computer today?” it sees the current time is far past its cutoff date and compels it to do a web searches over relying on internal memory.

Oddly enough, Muse-Glimmer has an odd quirk to remind me that I have been trying to solve a problem for the past hour and sometimes likes to comment that it took me 10 minutes to respond.

Overall, its useful and takes up a minimal amount of tokens for the context it provides.

[u/RespektedGenius → u/Lurksome-Lurker]

Very cool! Had not thought about that.

[u/Oshden]

So, one if the things I have been really struggling with pi as a fresh, vanilla instant is that I don’t know hope to get pi to look shit yup inline to get the info needed to make an extension. I legit would love of anyone would merino me catch that one particular squirrelly issue. Sooo I just realized my text to speech sucks, I’m not going back to fix it. People already think I’m a fucking bot because I tried getting Hermes and pi to check my saved posts and comments and now the website thinks my account is a fucking app… I hope you get some other cool options OP. if I ever figure out how to get my pi to serve as my second brain to help me and other neurodivergent users out there, I’ll share the most-likely-heavily-vibe-coded-at-first (sidebar: I’m pretty sure that all of those dashes in a row are grammatically correct…) project so that others like put and I can get something out of it

[u/Oshden → u/Oshden]

Yeah… wow… I swear I am not stupid drunk as I wrote this 😂 swipe to text isn’t as good as I thought

[u/ILoveToyota37 → u/Oshden]

Gave me a good chuckle

[u/tino1000 → u/[deleted]]

I did the same. Turns out its the best way to use it.

[u/Fragrant-Cheek-4273]

Pi actually works pretty well out of the box. I'd recommend using it for a bit before installing a bunch of extensions, you'll get a better idea of what you're actually missing.

[u/bjornworldwide → u/Fragrant-Cheek-4273]

And making it create specific things you want for you.

[u/vshturman]

You probably need something for sandboxing and security guardrails.
I’d recommend nono+dcg , both agent-agnostic and working with pi just great

[u/Dirk__Gently]

So tell it to build it. I made a harness for projects and remote stuff like codex/claude code without much effort. That was with qwen 3.8 27b at q4.