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🧠 PiCode

An agentic code editor with its own AI inside — not an assistant you install afterwards.

PiCode is a free, open-source editor built from the VS Code source, with the Pi coding agent and the Gentle AI workflow harness living in the editor core. Open it, connect a provider, and the agent is already there: the chat, your providers, your memory and your skills.

Powered by Gentle AI. PiCode uses Gentle AI — its workflow (ODD), its subagents and its review tools — and its Engram memory, made by Gentleman Programming. Go star their projects: a good part of what makes PiCode useful is theirs.

Free and complete. No feature is held back and nothing needs a server. The paid part is cloud sync of your profile — never a locked feature.

⚡ The 30-second version

1. Download a release and unzip it (Windows x64 today).
2. Open it. A setup window comes first, in your computer's language: choose how you work (Agent or Editor), your agent, a model, a theme and a few extras. Every step can be skipped, and PiCode: Set up PiCode brings it back later.
3. Open the editor's chat and ask the agent to do something.

Your whole setup lives in a data/ folder beside the executable. Delete that folder and PiCode is clean; copy it and your setup moves with you.

📥 Get it

Three channels share the same code, each on its own branch with its own update feed:

Channel	For	Branch	Feed
Stable	everyday use, recommended	master	updates/stable
Beta	early access to what is coming	beta	updates/beta
Experimental	the freshest work, may break	experimental	updates/experimental

Download the latest release · Choose a channel · Verify your download

🌟 What you get

• 💬 AI chat, built in. Streaming answers, tools, reasoning and your project's context, right in the editor. It reads your code, edits files and runs commands — and asks before it does.
• 🔌 Your AI providers. Connect with an API key or a subscription (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Grok, Kimi, Meta, OpenRouter…), or declare a compatible endpoint. Pick the model per conversation.
• 🤖 Two ways of working: Agent or Editor. Editor is the VS Code you know. Agent moves the same editor around the conversation: your sessions on the left, the chat in the middle and a review bar on the right. Switch any time with the robot button, no restart. See Two Ways of Working.
• 🧭 A status column. In Agent, next to the chat: where the agent works, your MCP servers, the lines you changed (click it to review every change in one tab), the tasks the chat has out and what your memory holds.
• 🌍 13 languages. The editor, the setup and everything PiCode adds are translated; the setup opens in your computer's language and gets it ready for the editor. See Languages.
• 🚀 First-run setup. A window of its own, before the editor: language, layout, agent, model, theme and extras. Change any of it later.
• 🎨 Themes. A gallery that shows each theme's real colours, read from the theme itself: hover to try it on, click to keep it.
• 🧩 MCP servers in one place. Add, edit, switch off or remove the agent's external tools. pi calls them through the editor, so its confirmations and permissions apply.
• 📊 A status panel that tells the truth. Which pi is answering, its version, your providers, every MCP server and its state, the model and thinking level in use, what the session has cost.
• 🧠 Gentle AI and Engram, built in. The ODD method, specialised subagents and a memory your agent keeps between conversations — nothing to install.
• 🗂️ Sessions and Tasks. Every conversation is kept per project: search it, reopen it, read it. The agent can also search and read your earlier conversations, and Tasks shows what its subagents are doing.
• 🩹 Small updates. Hotfixes and minor updates arrive as a small download that is verified, applied on a copy and rolled back by itself if the new version does not start. See Updates and Hotfixes.
• ☁️ PiCode Account. Sign in and your settings, extensions, AI configuration and your agent's memory follow you to any machine — encrypted in transit and at rest.

🗺️ Where to go

You want to…	Read
See whether it is for you	What PiCode Is
Install or update it	Getting PiCode
Reach a working agent	Set up PiCode
Choose how the editor is laid out	Two Ways of Working
Use PiCode in your language	Languages
Connect a provider or model	Pi Inside
Sync across machines	Cloud Sync
Understand how updates arrive	Updates and Hotfixes
Fix something	Troubleshooting
Ask a common question	FAQ
Build or contribute	Building PiCode
Understand the design	Architecture
Look up a term	Glossary

🧩 The pieces it stands on

• VSCodium / VS Code — the editor itself. MIT source, rebranded, with Copilot and telemetry taken out.
• Pi — the coding agent: its loop, tools, providers, models, packages and skills.
• Gentle AI + Engram — the ODD workflow, its subagents and review tools, and the persistent memory.

All three are MIT-licensed, and their licence notices ship with the editor. PiCode is an independent project, not an official distribution of any of them.

📊 Quick facts

• Current release: PiCode 0.5.2, on three channels.
• Editor base: built from the VS Code source. The editor reports 1.142.x so extensions keep installing; the source descends from VS Code 1.135.0.
• Bundled agent: Pi 1.4.0, pinned and installed from inside the editor.
• Platforms: Windows x64.
• License: MIT. The product speaks English; other languages arrive later as language packs.

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This wiki is the public synthesis. Its sources are the repository's docs/ papers and its decision records; when they disagree, they win.