Pi
The Pi coding agent inside Sentinel, through Pi's RPC mode.
Sentinel can run a thread on the Pi coding agent.
It starts pi --mode rpc and talks to it in JSON lines over stdin and stdout. One Pi process per thread stays up between turns. Pi support is experimental.
Setup
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Install | npm install -g --ignore-scripts @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent, or curl -fsSL https://pi.dev/install.sh | sh |
| Update | pi update --self |
| Required | Pi 0.80.5 or newer, which speaks the RPC protocol Sentinel uses |
| Home variable | None; instances share Pi's sign-in and settings |
| Binary override | The instance's binary path, or SENTINEL_PI_PATH for the default instance |
Sign-in
- Sign in from Pi opens Pi in a terminal inside the Pi card: type
/loginand pick a provider. - Use an API key for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, or OpenRouter stores the key encrypted on the instance, as
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY,OPENAI_API_KEY,GEMINI_API_KEY, orOPENROUTER_API_KEY.
Pi counts as signed in once it offers at least one model.
Approvals
Pi leaves permissions to its extensions. Sentinel loads a small Pi extension of its own that asks before every tool call, and Sentinel answers each one from the thread's permission mode: read-only tools at once, edits by scope under Accept edits, everything under Full.
So changing the permission mode never restarts Pi.
Running a thread
- Permission modes: Default, Accept edits, and Full.
- Plan mode: none. Pi has no plan mode.
- Models come from Pi as
provider/model, or Pi's own default. The thinking level is set per thread. - Images can be attached to a prompt.
- MCP servers are not passed to Pi, which has no MCP client.
- Slash commands Pi reports appear in the composer's slash menu. Pi manages its own skills.
What Sentinel keeps for a Pi thread
Pi's session file, the working directory, model, thinking level, and the last message the session holds. Pi resumes a session by its file path.