Frequently asked questions

It is a complete Pi in one executable: you do not need Pi, Node.js or Bun installed. If you have Pi, Pi-Bolt runs next to it as pi-bolt and uses the same configuration, sessions and extensions.

No. Pi-Bolt is Pi's own TypeScript source, compiled ahead of time to native code, with a small set of fixes on top. That is why Pi's behavior, commands and extensions carry over. See How it works.

Run pi-bolt --version. The first number is the Pi release the build is made from: 1.1.0 (Pi-Bolt 0.8.0, ...) is Pi 1.1.0.

Each new Pi release is merged into Pi-Bolt and released after Pi-Bolt's tests pass. So far that has taken about a day. Run pi-bolt update to get the latest.

No. It installs to its own folder and command. Uninstalling it leaves Pi and ~/.pi/agent in place.

Pi is already compiled to machine code, so a JIT would only add compiler threads, warm-up and memory. The JIT only helps code loaded at run time, such as heavy extensions. For those, install the JIT build: it keeps nearly all of Pi-Bolt's gains, within about 5%. See Choose a build.

It is not the disk. The file arrives as a streamed tool call in thousands of small chunks, and stock Pi parses and redraws the whole call for each one, so the work grows with the square of the file's size. Pi-Bolt processes only the new part. See Benchmarks.

No. The model's speed is the provider's. Pi-Bolt makes everything around it lighter: launching, drawing long answers, handling large tool calls, and long sessions. That matters most on laptops, with several agents at once, and in scripts.

In our measurements Pi-Bolt uses the least CPU in sessions and per prompt, the least memory over a session, and writes large files fastest; PiG starts a few milliseconds sooner, and oh-my-pi streams long answers about as cheaply. See Against PiG and oh-my-pi.

Yes, unchanged. Extensions that use bun:ffi, such as pi-fff, need the JIT build. Extensions that start Pi themselves may need to be pointed at pi-bolt. See Extensions.

Yes. Set the tool's Pi command to pi-bolt. See Integrations.

Yes. Codemode is built into Pi and runs in Pi-Bolt as it does in Pi: pi-bolt -t +codemode.

macOS 13 or later on Apple silicon, Linux on x86-64 with glibc 2.17 or later, and Windows 10 (1809) or later on x64. See Requirements.

Not yet. There is no Linux ARM64 build, and Android uses a different C library from the glibc that the Linux build needs.

Yes. Pi-Bolt is MIT licensed. Release executables include Bun (MIT), JavaScriptCore (LGPL-2.0 and BSD), ICU and Pi (MIT); see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.