I've only used CC and Pi and the point of pi is to use extensions. Luckily you can write them yourself pretty easily.
I cannot get behind CC is the best harness. Once u switched to pi I knew I was never going back and occasionally I need to use CC for my subscription and find it unpleasant. CC is just this incoherent hodge podge of functionality that seems to have no vision. Subjective, of course.
I switched to Pi and it was great but I had to switch back to Claude Code purely for the subscription. Even with all the token efficiency I built into Pi it just wasn't nearly as good value as an Anthropic subscription. All open models ended up being more expensive so I switched to using an OpenAI subscription, which was better, but the OpenAI subscription is way less generous AND their models are behind. It became hard to justify.
> Luckily you can write them yourself pretty easily.
According to the article you can ask Pi to write ssuch extensions, so you don't have to, right?
I use both but I’m fairly new to Pi. For now things that I notably miss in Pi are plan mode and subtasks. I was also a bit surprised that it doesn't have default permission mode (deny all) like CC. It’d make sense when using an open router model. But I haven’t used extensions that much yet, so who knows what features I’m overlooking. I don’t see myself dropping CC for now though.
How much does pi cost you when you’re using 5.5 via API?
I feel like the max CC plans are incredible value.
I use pi with zero extensions after they added MCP natively. I switched to pi the first time Claude decided to get itself stuck in a loop with a bunch of work trees, sub agents and unresolvable merge conflicts. I don’t want Claude deciding when to use sub agents and work worktrees. I also like using the same harness regardless of which model I want to use.
I switch harnesses regularly depending on the model providers, and I only use skills which are universally usable in any model and harness combination. I don't want to get tied to a particular model or harness, and skills provide me the freedom to do so.
I can include any custom programs I need in a skill, and the SKILL.md file is just a doc of how to use those. It helps me save tokens and ensures determinism with repeated workflows since redoing a task is just calling a skill's program.
I also load only skills that are necessary for a project. I don't want to pollute the context window with unneeded skills.