Why Selesai
Selesai is a fork of the Pi coding agent. It keeps Pi’s terminal-first, hackable core and adds a coordinated set of bundled extensions, skills, and workspace improvements. This page separates what Pi already provides from what Selesai adds or bundles, and links every material Selesai claim to evidence.
What Pi already does
Pi remains a small, capable coding harness. Selesai preserves these baseline capabilities:
- terminal-first interactive coding with
read,bash,edit,write,grep,find, andls; - multiple model providers, API keys, OAuth, thinking levels, images, and retries;
- persistent sessions with resume, fork, tree navigation, compaction, and export;
- print, JSON event-stream, and RPC modes;
- TypeScript extensions, skills, prompt templates, themes, packages, and an embeddable Node.js SDK;
- project trust and configurable resource loading.
Compare at a glance
Pi has a broad ecosystem of optional extensions and skills. Selesai’s bet is different: install one package and get a coordinated set of 24 capabilities — 22 bundled extensions that load automatically, 1 optional extension, and 1 core built-in — tested together and shipped with every release.
Bundled at a glance
Every bundled capability, grouped by category:
Delegation and workflows
- Subagent delegation — Run focused in-tree agent roles in foreground, background, parallel, or chained modes with tooling and model controls.
Research and interaction
- Web research — Single `web_explore` research tool with bounded search, fetch, source ranking, and headless-browser escalation.
- Interactive questions — TUI wizard (or host dialogs in RPC/VS Code) for single, multi-select, and freeform questions with keyboard navigation and filtering.
- Public code search — Search GitHub code through grep.app and fetch matching source without leaving the agent.
Continuity and recovery
- Session coordination — Local 1:1 session messaging, ask/reply, and attachments between named Selesai sessions.
- Persistent memory — Facts, preferences, corrections, and reusable procedures survive across sessions, with search over every past conversation.
- Herdr pane state — Reports Selesai's working, blocked, and idle state to a Herdr pane over a local socket.
- Turn-level undo — Undo tracked edits, writes, and detected mutating shell commands one turn at a time.
- Copy turn — Copy a user or assistant result from the session by hash using `/cp <hash>`.
- Context reminder — Warn when a conversation grows large and suggest `/handoff-new` to reduce context and cost.
- Auto session naming — Name the session on every user message using the current model, from user-message history only, without blocking your message.
- Session handoff — Create an editable continuation prompt in a clean session to reset context and cut token spend.
Terminal workspace
- TPS tracker — Live tokens-per-second status for the main model and subagent runs, with reliability gates against stalls and tool calls.
- Progressive capability gateway — Keep optional extension tools and skills out of the default model context while making them discoverable and activatable on demand.
- Zentui TUI — Starship-style statusline and Opencode-style editor surfaces with independent per-component styling, configured via /zentui.
- Cost reconciliation — Record the real billed cost reported by gateways and show authoritative totals in the zentui footer.
- Tool display — Compact OpenCode-style tool rendering, diff visualization, output truncation, and a native user message box, configured via /tool-display.
- Token onboarding — First-run onboarding path for provider credentials and API tokens.
Skills and productivity
- Inline skills — Lightweight inline skill invitations without separate skill files.
- Ponytail communication — Minimal, compressed communication mode and review helpers invoked via `/skill:ponytail*`.
- RTK integration — Provision RTK when needed and rewrite compatible shell commands to reduce noisy output and token burn.
- Agent browser automation — Browser automation through the external `agent-browser` CLI: navigation, screenshots, accessibility snapshots, form filling, and extraction, with an opt-in setup flow.
What Selesai adds or bundles
The complete list: all 24 capabilities grouped by category, each linking to its guide. Bundled extensions load automatically; the optional extension and the core built-in are tagged.
Delegation and workflows
| Capability | Guide |
|---|---|
| Subagent delegation | Read the guide |
Research and interaction
| Capability | Guide |
|---|---|
| Web research | Read the guide |
| Interactive questions | Read the guide |
| Public code search | Read the guide |
Continuity and recovery
| Capability | Guide |
|---|---|
| Session coordination | Read the guide |
| Persistent memory | Read the guide |
| Herdr pane state | Read the guide |
| Turn-level undo | Read the guide |
| Copy turn | Read the guide |
| Context reminder | Read the guide |
| Auto session naming | Read the guide |
| Session handoff | Read the guide |
| Rewind checkpoints (optional) | Read the guide |
Terminal workspace
| Capability | Guide |
|---|---|
| TPS tracker | Read the guide |
| Progressive capability gateway | Read the guide |
| Zentui TUI | Read the guide |
| Cost reconciliation | Read the guide |
| Tool display | Read the guide |
| Token onboarding | Read the guide |
| llama.cpp model manager (core) | Read the guide |
Skills and productivity
| Capability | Guide |
|---|---|
| Inline skills | Read the guide |
| Ponytail communication | Read the guide |
| RTK integration | Read the guide |
| Agent browser automation | Read the guide |
Why bundling matters
Pi has a broad extension ecosystem. Installing many separate packages means tracking their maintenance, compatibility, and supply-chain boundaries. Selesai carries the extensions that define its experience in src/extensions/, tests them with the application, and ships them with each release.
This keeps the source visible, reviewable, and auditable in one place. It does not eliminate supply-chain risk — Selesai still has runtime dependencies — but it removes the need to install many unrelated extensions before Selesai is useful.
Practical outcomes
- Lower setup friction: install
@selesai/codeand get subagents, workflows, web research, questions, code search, recovery tools, skills, and a richer UI in one package — no plugin scavenger hunt. - Smaller token spend:
/handoff-new, context reminders, RTK rewrites, the TPS tracker, and Zentui’s compact surfaces keep context small, quiet, and focused. - Better recoverability: git-backed rewind checkpoints, turn-level undo, session handoffs, and inter-session coordination reduce the cost of mistakes.
- Fewer surprises: every capability ships with a guide, configuration reference, and source evidence — no black-box plugins.