PI-Desktop

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 20:21:32 +0800

vastsa/PI-Desktop

PI-Desktop

Your local-first desktop workspace for AI coding agents.

Bring your own model. Open any local project. Let agents work — while you stay in control.

No PI-Desktop account. No mandatory relay. No editor lock-in.

Download PI-Desktop · Documentation · Screenshots · 简体中文

_{A standalone desktop workspace for coding agents, projects, models, tools, and long-running sessions.}

[!IMPORTANT] PI-Desktop is currently in Early Preview.

The project is actively developed and already usable for real coding workflows, but APIs, extension interfaces, and some desktop behaviors may continue to evolve.

Why PI-Desktop?

Most coding agents live inside a terminal, an editor extension, or a hosted service.

PI-Desktop gives them a workspace of their own.

🖥️ Desktop-first

Work across repositories and sessions without tying your agent workflow to one editor or terminal.

Projects, conversations, reviews, files, previews, notifications, and extensions live in one workspace.

✨ Bring your own model

Use OpenAI, Anthropic, local models, hosted gateways, or any OpenAI-compatible API.

Configure multiple providers and models, then switch between them per session.

🔍 Inspectable by default

Agents can read files, edit code, and run commands — but privileged actions pass through PI-Desktop’s permission layer.

Review diffs, inspect command output, and decide how much autonomy each session gets.

🧩 Built to extend

Add Skills, MCP servers, Subagents, and installable Plugins.

Plugins can contribute tools, commands, panels, themes, services, skills, and new workspace experiences.

From prompt to patch

Getting started only takes a few steps:

Connect a model Open Settings → Model configuration, choose a provider or compatible API, and add your credentials.
Open a project Add any local repository or project directory from the sidebar.
Pick Agent, Plan, or Goal Agent starts working. Plan waits until you approve a frozen implementation plan. Goal waits until you approve the outcome, then the agent chooses the path.
Review the result Inspect edits in the Review panel, check command output, preview the application, and continue the conversation without leaving PI-Desktop.

More than a chat window

Agent, Plan, and Goal

Same agent. Three gates. Privileged tools still go through the permission layer in every mode.

	Agent	Plan	Goal
You approve	Nothing extra	The implementation plan	The outcome and acceptance criteria
The agent does	Reads, edits, runs commands, tests, iterates	Studies the repo, writes a frozen plan, then waits	Picks the path and works until the goal is met
Use when	You want it to just do the work	The change is large or risky and you want the approach first	You care about the result, not the route

Agent is the default loop: inspect the tree, patch files, run commands, and keep going.

Plan is the approval boundary. The agent researches first and produces an immutable implementation plan. Execution does not start until you sign off.

Goal is outcome-first. You lock the objective and acceptance criteria; the agent decides how to get there.

Delegate work to Subagents

Large tasks rarely belong in one context window.

PI-Desktop can delegate independent work to background Subagents for things like:

codebase exploration
multi-file implementation
research and investigation
test analysis
adversarial review

Each Subagent runs in its own context and reports its result back to the parent agent.

A workspace built for long sessions

PI-Desktop is designed for more than one prompt at a time.

You can manage multiple projects and sessions, pin or archive conversations, branch sessions, queue prompts while an agent is running, reference files with @, use slash commands, and search across the application.

Streaming responses are checkpointed so interrupted work can survive application restarts or runtime failures whenever possible.

Your models, your choice

PI-Desktop does not lock the agent runtime to a hardcoded model list.

Use:

OpenAI and Anthropic
OpenAI-compatible APIs
hosted model gateways
local gateways such as Ollama and LM Studio
multiple models under the same provider
provider OAuth accounts where supported

Model configuration can include context windows, output limits, reasoning controls, temperature, and other model-specific behavior.

Switch models directly from the Composer without recreating your session.

Review the work, not just the answer

The agent workspace includes dedicated surfaces for the things that matter while coding:

_{Long-running conversations with transcript navigation}	_{Switch providers, models, and reasoning levels per session}
_{Extend the workspace through the plugin marketplace}	_{Add a provider and connect a model}

Explore all screenshots →

Extensions without rebuilding the app

PI-Desktop has several extension layers depending on how deeply you want to customize the agent.

Skills

Give agents reusable instructions and workflows.

Skills can be installed globally or activated for individual projects.

MCP

Connect external tools and services through Model Context Protocol servers without baking them into the desktop application.

PI-Desktop can also be controlled by an external MCP Agent. Start the app with PI_DESKTOP_MCP_CONTROL=1; then read the loopback endpoint and bearer token from mcp-control.json in the Electron user-data directory. The endpoint supports project/session/Agent workflows and a reviewed desktop operation catalog. It is disabled by default, binds loopback only, and grants the calling local Agent the same authority as the desktop for those operations — confirm: true is not a user prompt.

Subagents

Create specialized agents with their own instructions, tools, and model choices, then delegate work to them from another agent.

pi extensions

Extensions written for the pi CLI run inside PI-Desktop’s agent unchanged: a plugin lists them under contributes.agentExtensions, and Plugins → “Import pi extension” wraps an existing extension file or directory in a plugin for you. They register tools, slash commands, and hooks on every turn, tool call, and provider request, and run with the same access as the agent’s own tools, which the agent.extension permission asks you to confirm.

Plugins

Plugins can extend PI-Desktop itself with:

agent tools
commands
workspace panels
work-panel views
Skills
MCP servers
Subagents
themes
resident services
inter-plugin messaging

Plugins can be installed locally or through the marketplace using the .piplug package workflow.

[!NOTE] Plugin processes are permission-gated and isolated from the renderer, but plugins are still user-trusted code rather than a complete operating-system sandbox. Only install plugins you trust.

Build your first plugin →

Local-first, precisely

PI-Desktop is local-first, not “nothing ever touches the network.”

Data	Behavior
Conversations	Stored locally as JSONL with a SQLite index
Settings	Stored on your machine
API credentials	Stored in the operating system keychain
Logs	Local
PI-Desktop telemetry	None
Model requests	Sent directly to the provider or endpoint you configure

There is no required PI-Desktop account and no mandatory PI-hosted relay between your machine and your model provider.

If you use a remote model provider, the context required for that model request is naturally sent to that provider according to its own privacy policy.

Download

Download the latest build from GitHub Releases.

Platform	Architecture	Package
macOS	Apple Silicon	`.dmg` / `.zip`
macOS	Intel	`.dmg` / `.zip`
Windows	x64	NSIS installer / portable exe
Linux	x64	`.AppImage` / `.deb` / `.rpm` / `.asar`

Packaged builds can check GitHub Releases for updates and surface new versions inside the application. Windows NSIS and Linux AppImage can download and install in-app; macOS, Linux deb/rpm, and the Windows portable exe open the releases page. The Linux .asar asset is available for repackaging with a system Electron; launch it with electron PI-Desktop-<version>-linux-x64.asar after adding the native host and packaged resources required by the target distribution.

Linux

Linux x64 packages need glibc 2.35 or newer. That is the library shipped with:

Ubuntu 22.04 or later
Debian 12 or later
Fedora 36 or later

Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 11, Fedora 35, and older releases cannot load the bundled host. Check with ldd --version.

macOS

The tagged-release workflow publishes unsigned macOS artifacts by default. For a trusted unsigned install, move PI-Desktop.app to Applications and double-click PI-Desktop-macOS-open.command if macOS says the app is damaged. A manually dispatched run with sign_macos: true signs, notarizes, and staples macOS artifacts with Developer ID credentials before publication; signed builds do not need the helper.

Import your existing sessions

Already using another coding agent?

PI-Desktop can import local sessions from supported tools including:

Claude Code
Codex
OpenCode
Pi

Open Settings → Import to bring existing work into the desktop workspace.

Architecture

PI-Desktop deliberately separates the user interface from privileged host capabilities and the agent loop.

  flowchart TB
    UI["React Renderer<br/>Chat · Projects · Reviews · Settings"]
    Electron["Electron Main<br/>Desktop orchestration"]
    Rust["Rust Host Core<br/>Permissions · Filesystem · SQLite · Secrets"]
    Agent["pi Agent Sidecar<br/>Agent loop · Models · Streaming"]
    Provider["Model Provider<br/>Cloud or Local"]

    UI --> Electron
    Electron --> Rust
    Electron --> Agent
    Agent <--> Rust
    Agent --> Provider

The renderer has no Node integration.

The Rust Host Core owns privileged workspace operations, permissions, persistence, and secrets. The pi Agent Sidecar owns model interaction and the agent loop. Electron coordinates the desktop lifecycle while keeping those responsibilities separated.

Read the architecture specification →

Project status

PI-Desktop is an early preview under active development.

The current 0.14.x line includes the desktop shell, streaming agent runtime, Agent / Plan / Goal workflows, permission-aware workspace tools, projects and sessions, session imports, local MCP control, MCP / Skills / Subagents, background delegation, multi-provider model configuration, plugins and marketplace support, context checkpoints, notifications, release notes, and cross-platform packaging.

Current priorities include:

macOS tagged-release qualification
installer upgrade and rollback qualification
continued runtime and session-recovery hardening
stronger plugin sandboxing and publisher verification
broader UI-driven end-to-end coverage

Follow development through the project board and milestones.

Development

Requirements

Node.js >=22.19
pnpm >=10
stable Rust toolchain

The repository currently pins pnpm 11, while CI and release builds use Node 24.

Run locally

git clone https://github.com/vastsa/PI-Desktop.git
cd PI-Desktop

pnpm install

cargo build -p host-core
pnpm build:js

pnpm dev

Validate changes

1
2
3

pnpm typecheck
pnpm lint
pnpm test

Additional protocol, Plan, supervision, Subagent, and Electron E2E suites are documented in the repository specification.

Documentation

1
2

pnpm docs:dev
pnpm docs:check

Useful references:

Contributing

Issues, bug reports, feature proposals, documentation improvements, and pull requests are welcome.

For larger changes, opening an issue first makes it easier to align the implementation with the existing architecture and product contracts.

When working in the repository, start with AGENTS.md and the specification index.

Report an issue · View open issues

Built on open source

PI-Desktop builds on the excellent work of the open-source ecosystem.

The agent runtime uses pi-ai and pi-agent-core from pi-mono.

The desktop application is built with technologies including Electron, React, TypeScript, Rust, SQLite, Vite, Tailwind CSS, Shiki, Mermaid, KaTeX, TypeBox, and i18next.

Thank you to every project and contributor that makes PI-Desktop possible.

Model acknowledgements

This project was created by the models below — not by a lone genius, but by a token-powered construction crew.

Provider	Model	Tokens
OpenAI	`gpt-5.6-luna`	5,304,019,817
OpenAI	`gpt-5.6-sol`	4,825,458,273
OpenAI	`gpt-5.4`	4,213,269,324
Anthropic	`claude-opus-5`	3,909,952,653
OpenAI	`gpt-5.5`	3,800,382,171
xAI	`grok-4.5`	1,947,736,115
xAI	`grok-4.6`	797,233,571
DeepSeek	`deepseek-v4-flash`	329,790,234
OpenAI	`gpt-5.2-codex`	320,983,170
Xiaomi	`mimo-v2.5-pro`	304,822,052
Anthropic	`claude-fable-5-1`	302,580,552
OpenAI	`gpt-5.6-terra`	274,107,085
OpenAI	`gpt-5.3-codex`	255,366,945
OpenAI	`gpt-5.1-codex-max`	220,947,212
OpenAI	`gpt-5.1`	142,533,699
—	`Unknown model`	69,801,632
Anthropic	`claude-opus-4.6`	55,223,768
Zhipu	`stealth/ox-alpha`	22,954,876
Anthropic	`claude-fable-5`	16,116,907
OpenAI	`gpt-5.1-codex-mini`	12,895,478
Xiaohongshu	`dots-3-note-prev`	10,166,895
OpenAI	`gpt-5.1-codex`	3,916,509
Xiaomi	`mimo-v2.5`	3,785,071

Total for listed models: 27,144,044,009 tokens.

Community Links

Linux.Do — A community for sharing and discussing technology.

License

PI-Desktop is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0.

See LICENSE for details.

Build with the model you want. Keep the workflow yours.

Download PI-Desktop

_{macOS · Windows · Linux}

Code Signing

Windows releases of PI-Desktop are digitally signed with free code signing provided by SignPath.io, using a certificate from the SignPath Foundation.

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PI-Desktop

vastsa/PI-Desktop

PI-Desktop

Your local-first desktop workspace for AI coding agents.

Why PI-Desktop?

🖥️ Desktop-first

✨ Bring your own model

🔍 Inspectable by default

🧩 Built to extend

From prompt to patch

More than a chat window

Agent, Plan, and Goal

Delegate work to Subagents

A workspace built for long sessions

Your models, your choice

Review the work, not just the answer

Extensions without rebuilding the app

Skills

MCP

Subagents

pi extensions

Plugins

Local-first, precisely

Download

Linux

macOS

Import your existing sessions

Architecture

Project status

Development

Requirements

Run locally

Validate changes

Documentation

Contributing

Built on open source

Model acknowledgements

Community Links

License

Build with the model you want. Keep the workflow yours.

Code Signing