Research how to package agents and skills in Pi

[luisherranz]

We have plugins for Claude Code, but we need to research how something similar can be packaged in Pi. We would need not only agents and skills, but also other extensions (pi-teams, worktrees...).

[cbravobernal]

Yes. Pi can create packages and extensions/plugins that depend on other npm packages, and it can also
bundle/use other Pi packages.

In Pi terms:

• “Plugins” are usually extensions
• Shareable bundles are Pi packages
• A Pi package can include extensions, skills, prompts, and themes

Normal npm dependencies

If your extension/package needs a runtime library, add it to dependencies:

  {
    "name": "my-pi-package",
    "keywords": ["pi-package"],
    "dependencies": {
      "zod": "^3.23.0",
      "chalk": "^5.3.0"
    },
    "pi": {
      "extensions": ["./extensions"]
    }
  }

When installed through npm or git, Pi runs npm install, so dependencies are installed automatically.

Depending on another Pi package

Yes, but Pi packages are loaded with separate module roots, so separate installs do not automatically
share their Pi resources.

If package A wants to depend on package B’s extensions/skills/etc., package A should bundle B and
explicitly reference B’s resources through node_modules:

  {
    "name": "my-wrapper-package",
    "keywords": ["pi-package"],
    "dependencies": {
      "other-pi-package": "^1.0.0"
    },
    "bundledDependencies": ["other-pi-package"],
    "pi": {
      "extensions": [
        "extensions",
        "node_modules/other-pi-package/extensions"
      ],
      "skills": [
        "skills",
        "node_modules/other-pi-package/skills"
      ]
    }
  }

Pi core packages

If your extension imports Pi APIs, list Pi core packages as peerDependencies, not bundled
dependencies:

  {
    "peerDependencies": {
      "@mariozechner/pi-coding-agent": "*",
      "@mariozechner/pi-ai": "*",
      "@mariozechner/pi-tui": "*",
      "typebox": "*"
    }
  }

Short answer

Yes: Pi can create packages/extensions that depend on other packages. Use:

• dependencies for normal runtime libraries
• peerDependencies for Pi core packages
• dependencies + bundledDependencies + node_modules/... paths when depending on another Pi package’s
  resources.

To implement

I'm going to create an extension for adding the skill with the worktree and pi teams extensions.

[luisherranz]

An idea that occurred to me and that can also be tested is to keep it as a skill but include the sub-agents' profiles within a subfolder. When the skill starts, it should check if the agents are available and, if they are not, tell the user that they need to "install" them (move them to the corresponding folder). Although it might not be simple if it doesn't know where on the hard drive the skill is installed, since there may be symlinks or references to the home folder, etc.

The main advantage of this system is that installing radical-pipelines would still be as simple as npx skills add automattic/radical-pipelines. If we move into the territory of plugins, different instructions would be needed for each CLI. Anyway, we could try to see how it works.

[cbravobernal]

We finally created a Claude and a Pi plugin. Testing now.