What is Pithagoras
Pithagoras is a web front end for the pi coding agent. You point it at a directory, describe a task, and close the tab. The work carries on without you, and the transcript is waiting when you come back.
That last part is the whole design. A prompt is accepted, not awaited — the HTTP request returns as soon as pi has taken the message, and the run continues under the server's ownership. Everything pi emits is appended to a SQLite event log, so a browser that reconnects an hour or a week later replays from its last seen position rather than discovering it missed the interesting part.
What it is not
It is not a sandbox by default. The host executor runs pi as a child of the portal with the portal's own permissions, working directly on mounted directories. That is fast and simple, and it assumes you trust the tasks you submit. A container executor exists for stricter isolation — see Architecture.
It is also not multi-tenant. There is one password, and anyone who knows it gets the same view. Run it somewhere private; Tailscale is the setup it was built against.
The pieces
Sessions are the normal unit of work: one workspace directory, one conversation, its own model and effort level. You create them, they persist, you pin the ones you keep coming back to. See Sessions.
Agents are the continuous side. An agent is a character with a home directory, a SOUL.md, and a memory that carries from one conversation to the next; the first one is Home, and you can add more. An agent can look around on its own on a schedule, wears an avatar that is the orb in voice mode, and is reachable from outside the portal through channels. Where sessions are per-task, an agent is continuous. See Agents.
Channels are two-way links into an agent — Telegram, Signal, a webhook, whatever you write. Messages arrive through a channel and replies go back the same way, and every conversation on a channel gets a session of its own. Channel types are packages, so adding one is installing a repo rather than patching the portal. See Agent and channels and Writing a channel.
Routines are standing instructions on a schedule: the agent wakes, does the work and goes quiet, reporting only when there is something worth saying. See Routines.
People and the guard decide who the agent will talk to and what it may do for them, and what happens when it reads something it cannot trust. See People and Prompt injection.
Extensions are pi's own package system. Anything you install shows up in the portal's slash command palette, interactive menus included, and skills are the agent's written procedures. See Extensions.
Panels sit beside the chat: Files, Git, a terminal with background jobs and subagents, and canvases. Each docks on its own side.
Models are set up from Settings, without editing files — see Models and providers. Voice talks to the agent with local speech recognition and synthesis (Voice control). The agent's own browser, an Understory memory, image generation and editing and video generation (Media, an extension that comes with the portal) are optional extensions. The portal installs as an app and speaks English and German — see The interface.
Status
Honest state of things, so you know what you are getting:
| Area | State |
|---|---|
| Sessions, workspaces, transcript replay | Working |
| Model and effort per session, surviving restarts | Working |
| Slash commands — builtin, extension, prompt, skill | Working |
| Agents, heartbeat, routines, people and the guard | Working |
| Files, Git, terminal, canvases, voice, images, model providers | Working |
| Video generation (stable-diffusion.cpp's server) | Working; the one backend there is |
| Settings, extension config, package management | Working |
| Channel packages: loading, installing, configuring | Working |
| The channel supervisor — starting them, routing replies | Working |
| The builtin packages against real Telegram/Slack/Discord/Signal | Untested |
Channels start, resolve each conversation to its own session, and carry the reply back. What has not happened is a connection to a real Telegram, Slack, Discord or Signal account — that needs credentials I could not test with, so treat the first one you configure as the real trial.