The Pi course

This is a hands-on course, not a reference. Most coding agents hand you an opinionated machine and hide the wiring. Pi does the opposite: a bare core of four default tools, a deliberately compact system prompt, and no guardrails - everything else is yours to build. So this course is a build. You’ll spend a week with Pi turning an inherited side project - stash, a small self-hosted read-it-later service - into something you trust, and in the same motion you’ll assemble a Pi harness tailored to it: system rules, model routing, custom tools, safety gates, a verify loop, and a small agent team.

That double movement is the point. The model is the constant; the harness is the variable you control. Every module improves stash a little and your harness a lot, and the through-line question is the one worth carrying into any tool you use: how is the tool you have right now shaping what you believe is possible?

If you want the spec-level “what is this primitive” view, that’s Foundations. This course is the other half: the muscle memory of building a harness with your own hands.

All chapters live

The full curriculum is written start to finish. Read it in order to build up from a bare core, or jump to the chapter you need. Lessons may still get sharpened over time.

The curriculum

Ten chapters, in reading order. Each carries the stash project - and your growing harness - one stretch further.

1 · Getting started Install Pi, authenticate (BYOK - API key vs OAuth), watch one turn of the loop, and ship a first real fix to a repo you've just inherited.

2 · The core The four tools and the loop, made observable. Read the live context and the system prompt at boot - see what other agents hide from you.

3 · Context Sessions, forking, compaction, and a project APPEND_SYSTEM.md. Write your conventions down once so you stop re-explaining them every session.

4 · Models & config Global vs project config, the model files, and routing cheap models to grunt work and strong ones to careful work - including local models and their limits.

5 · Your first extension The TypeScript extension API: add a slash command, a real tool, and a lifecycle hook. Hot-reloaded, no build step.

6 · Rebuild the defaults Add back what Pi omits on purpose - permissions, task discipline, plan mode, a status line - as extensions you actually understand.

7 · Skills & packages The no-code layer: skills, prompt templates, themes - and how to package and share the pieces you build.

8 · Subagents Pi ships none, so build them: spawn child agents, fan a big job out in parallel, and run a verifier that doesn't trust the builder.

9 · Teams Harness engineering: orchestrator, lead, and worker agents, per-agent expertise, peer messaging - and an honest test of when it's worth it.

10 · Daily workflow Assemble the layers into one coherent harness, then judge clear-eyed where Pi wins and where it costs you.

How to read it

Each chapter carries one running project - you’ll follow stash across a week of real work - and the lessons build on each other: each one picks up a problem the last one left you with, adds a piece to your harness, and hands off to the next.

So you get the most out of a chapter by reading it in order. But each lesson still stands on its own if you drop in from a search with one specific problem in front of you - you’ll just miss the running story.

What you won’t find is a fixed template stamped onto every lesson. Some need a long worked transcript, some a single command and a warning, some a digression into why Pi is built the way it is. The shape follows the content, the way a good book varies its chapters.