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A developer writing on September 21 said he is replacing Claude Code as his primary coding harness with Pi, citing workflow problems, frequent changes and a preference for a smaller, more customizable tool. His account is a personal assessment, not an independent comparison, and does not establish that other users are making the same switch.
A longtime Claude Code user says he has replaced Anthropic’s coding harness with the open-source tool Pi, citing problems with its editor workflow, stability and customization. The September 21 account on caleb.software is a single developer’s experience, but it offers a view of the trade-offs users face as AI coding tools add features and change rapidly.
The author said he had used Claude Code since it became available through the Claude Pro subscription more than a year earlier. He described the decision to switch as the result of accumulated frustrations rather than one incident. He said Pi took some initial setup, but after the first few days he found it smooth to use and valued its minimalist design and customizability.
One complaint concerned support for project-level instruction files. The author said he had maintained CLAUDE.md files in hobby repositories and found it inconvenient to copy or link those instructions for tools using the AGENTS.md format. He noted that Anthropic announced Claude Code support for AGENTS.md the day after he decided to leave, but said that change came too late for him to reverse his decision.
He also described limitations in connecting Claude Code to VS Code. In his account, only one session at a time could receive text selections from the editor. He said the official extension supported multiple tabs but had shortcomings, including slash commands that did not work and subagent messages that were difficult to follow. These are the author’s reported experiences; the post does not provide independent testing or a response from Anthropic.
Why Coding Tool Design Matters
The account highlights that choosing an AI coding tool involves more than the underlying model. A developer’s daily experience can depend on how reliably a harness works with an editor, how it handles parallel tasks, and whether its behavior can be adapted to an existing workflow. For users who inspect generated code before committing it, the author’s complaints about editor context and session handling may be particularly relevant.
The post also points to a tension in software development tools: adding capabilities can help some customers while making a product harder to use or less predictable for others. The author argued that rapid feature releases and changes to system instructions affected his setup. That is his interpretation, not evidence that Claude Code’s releases have broadly reduced performance or that Pi is better for all developers.
For readers weighing a switch, the practical takeaway is narrower: the author found Pi’s ability to be extended useful for his own needs. He said he wrote an extension for a multi-tab workflow in about 20 minutes. That example suggests customization can address a particular gap, but it does not show how much effort other users would need or whether the extension is publicly available.
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From Claude Code to Pi
The author’s account places his change against a fast-moving market for AI coding harnesses—the software that connects a model to code, tools and development workflows. He credited Claude Code with making a strong impression when he first used it, saying a single prompt could produce code for weekend projects. He also acknowledged that established tools are being developed in a new field and that later products such as Pi can benefit from lessons learned by earlier ones.
To support his criticism of the pace of change, the author reported that Claude Code had received 244 releases during 2026 by the time he wrote the post. He said more than three-quarters changed the system prompt or tool descriptions. The figure and characterization come from his own review; the post does not provide a release-by-release analysis or an independent measure of how those changes affected users.
He further argued that Claude Code’s default Bash tool description used nearly 3,000 tokens, including instructions related to Git and GitHub. He contrasted that overhead with Pi’s more restrained approach. The claim is the author’s assessment of the tools and their instructions, not a published benchmark of cost, speed or coding quality.
““For now, I’m leaving. I’m excited to lean more into Pi.””
— The author of the caleb.software post
What the Account Cannot Establish
The post does not establish whether the reported editor and extension problems affect all users, which Claude Code versions or configurations were involved, or whether the issues have since been fixed. The author referred to a past bug report and described the status of features at the time of writing, but no independent testing is included.
It is also unclear whether the author’s extensions will be released publicly. The post says he hopes to share them after cleaning them up. It gives no comparative measurements of Pi and Claude Code for coding quality, reliability, token use or total cost, and offers no evidence about how common this type of switch is among developers.
The author said he plans to clean up and share extensions he has written for his Pi workflow, though he did not give a release date. He encouraged developers with similar frustrations to try an open-source harness, while making clear that his recommendation follows from his own experience.
For Anthropic, the account records that AGENTS.md support was announced shortly after the author decided to leave; it does not say whether that release changed his view or provide further company comment. Readers considering Pi can follow the author’s future posts for the promised extensions and test the workflow against their own requirements.
Key Questions
What prompted the switch from Claude Code to Pi?
The author cited accumulated frustrations with editor integration, extension behavior, frequent changes and customization. He said no single issue drove the decision.
What is Pi?
In the account, Pi is described as an open-source coding harness. The author said he preferred its minimalist approach and found it highly customizable.
Yes. The author said Anthropic announced AGENTS.md support for Claude Code the day after he made his decision. He said the announcement came too late to change his plans.
Does the post prove Pi is better than Claude Code?
No. It reports one developer’s experience and preferences, without independent testing or comparative benchmarks. Other users may have different needs and results.
Source: caleb.software
