Agent Pi

Generic, domain-agnostic Pi CLI runner. Receives a task from the agent pipeline, spawns the pi CLI (from @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent) with configurable tools and instructions, and returns a structured JSON result.

New agents are created by swapping instructions (agent AGENTS.md guardrails) and ALLOWED_TOOLS — no Go code changes needed.

How It Works

1. Agent pipeline ([[task/controller]] → Kafka → [[task/executor]]) spawns a K8s Job with the agent-pi image.
2. The Job receives TASK_CONTENT, TASK_ID, BRANCH, ALLOWED_TOOLS, MODEL, PHASE, etc. via env vars.
3. main.go assembles the prompt via lib/pi (embedded workflow.md + output-format.md + task content).
4. Runs pi --print --mode json --no-session with the allowed tools and selected model.
5. Parses the JSON result and publishes to Kafka via lib/delivery.KafkaResultDeliverer (when TASK_ID set), or falls back to NoopResultDeliverer for local runs.

Env Vars

Var	Required	Default	Purpose
TASK_CONTENT	yes	—	Raw task markdown
BRANCH	yes	—	dev/prod — used as Kafka topic prefix
TASK_ID	no	—	Required when publishing results via Kafka
MODEL	no	MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed	Model name passed to pi --model
ALLOWED_TOOLS	no	—	Comma-separated pi tool allowlist (e.g. Read,Grep,Bash)
AGENT_DIR	no	agent	Directory containing AGENTS.md guardrails (used as pi cwd)
PROVIDER_API_KEY	no	—	MiniMax API key, threaded into the pi subprocess as MINIMAX_API_KEY
ENV_CONTEXT	no	—	Comma-separated KEY=VAL pairs injected into the prompt
PHASE	no	execution	Agent phase: planning | execution | ai_review
KAFKA_BROKERS	no	—	Required when TASK_ID is set
SENTRY_DSN	no	—	Error reporting
PUSHGATEWAY_URL	no	http://pushgateway:9090	Prometheus PushGateway URL
TASK_TYPE	no	unknown	Task type label for metric grouping

Pi's own config (auth state, sessions) lives in $HOME/.pi. The K8s manifest mounts a PVC at /home/pi/.pi; locally pi resolves it from your home dir. There is no CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR equivalent — pi does not have OAuth, it uses MINIMAX_API_KEY.

Creating a New Agent

To add a domain-specific agent that reuses this binary:

1. Create a task file in the OpenClaw vault with assignee: pi-agent (or a new assignee routed to this image via a Config CRD).
2. Mount a PVC or Secret containing the domain-specific AGENTS.md guardrails and any API credentials.
3. Set ALLOWED_TOOLS on the Config CRD to the minimum tools the agent needs.
4. Set ENV_CONTEXT to inject domain context (e.g. API URLs) into the prompt without modifying the binary.

Config CRD env pattern

The Config CRD's spec.env map becomes pod env vars, which main.go consumes via struct tags. Example from k8s/agent-pi.yaml:

spec:
env:
ALLOWED_TOOLS: Read,Bash,Grep,Glob,Write,EditMODEL: MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed

Tune ALLOWED_TOOLS per task shape (minimum viable set):

Task shape	Minimum tools
Web research	WebSearch,WebFetch,Read,Grep
Vault I/O via scripts	Bash(scripts/vault-read.sh:*),Bash(scripts/vault-write.sh:*),Bash(scripts/vault-list.sh:*),Grep
API query via script	Bash(scripts/trading-api-read.sh:*),Grep
Code edit	Read,Write,Edit,Grep,Glob,Bash(go:*),Bash(make:*)

Prefer constrained Bash(path:*) forms over bare Bash to minimize shell attack surface.

Pi subprocess env allowlist

lib/pi/pi-runner.go strips pod env down to a safe allowlist (HOME,PATH,USER,TZ,… plus known provider API keys: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, MINIMAX_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, PROVIDER_API_KEY, …) before spawning pi. Custom env vars beyond that list must be threaded explicitly via PiRunnerConfig.Env map[string]string in main.go. Don't expect arbitrary pod env to reach pi by default.

Local Quick Test

cd~/Documents/workspaces/agent/agent/pi
go run . \
--task-content "$(cat /path/to/task.md)" \
--model MiniMax-M2.7-highspeed \
--allowed-tools "Read,Write,Edit,Bash,Grep,Glob" \
--agent-dir agent \
--branch dev

Skips K8s, task controller, task executor, git writeback. Useful for iterating on prompts.

For a file-based local run (reads the task from disk, writes the result back), see cmd/run-task/.

Links

Admin endpoints:

• Dev: https://dev.quant.benjamin-borbe.de/admin/agent-pi/setloglevel/3
• Prod: https://prod.quant.benjamin-borbe.de/admin/agent-pi/setloglevel/3

Related

• pkg/prompts/ — embedded prompts (workflow.md, output-format.md)
• agent/AGENTS.md — default agent guardrails
• lib/pi/ — shared prompt assembly + pi CLI invocation
• lib/delivery/ — shared Kafka result publishing
• task/controller/ — Obsidian→Kafka event source
• task/executor/ — Kafka→K8s Job spawner

License

This project is licensed under the BSD-style license. See the LICENSE file for details.