pi-delegate

Pi Delegate

You are the orchestrator. Delegate a bounded coding task to a separate implementer - the Pi coding agent CLI - then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; the implementer makes changes in its own session; you verify and commit.

The loop needs only a shell command and file access, so any comparable orchestrator can drive it.

When NOT to use this

• The task is small enough to do inline; delegation overhead is not worth it.
• The pi CLI is not installed or authenticated.
• You need a sandboxed implementer. Pi has no sandbox and no permission modes; --read-only restricts the tool surface, but a write-capable run executes without prompts.

Prerequisites (check once)

1. Install pi with npm install -g @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent.
2. Authenticate: /login inside pi for a subscription provider, or an API-key environment variable / pi's auth file for an API-key provider.
3. Confirm pi --version succeeds.
4. Work in, or point --cd at, the target git repository.

Choose the model (optional)

Omit --model to use pi's configured default. To pick another, choose from pi --list-models and pass an explicit id or pattern like <provider>/<model-id> or sonnet:high. The relay accepts letters, digits, and . _ : / - only (the value reaches a shell on Windows), so glob patterns with * are not forwarded.

The loop

Run these five steps per task. Steps 1, 4, and 5 require judgment; 2 and 3 are mechanical.

1. Write the brief

Pi sees only the text you send plus what it can inspect in the workspace - no chat history or shared context. Include the goal, current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's actual gates, and a report contract. Tell pi not to commit. Keep one task per brief. Pi auto-loads AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md context files from the workspace and its parents, so repo instructions reach it without inlining. See references/writing-the-brief.md.