Pho Code

A bowl of Pi, served on the desktop.

A coding agent in a window you own. Fork the UI, the system prompt, the skills, and the built-in tools. Pi stays the engine.

Pho Code helps developers who personalize their editors and desktops build an AI coding workspace they truly own. The agent reads, edits, searches, and fetches inside a trusted local folder. The host around it is source you can change.

Philosophy

Always free. I built this for myself. You can use it too.

• Hate it? Fork it and make the version you want.
• Want to sell it? That's your problem, not mine.
• Love it? Give it a star. Love you.

No plan, no paywall, no "open core." The source is the product, licensed under MIT.

This is for people who rice their editor, keep a dotfiles repo, and would rather change a file than wait on a plugin marketplace. If you want a signed store app, a generic MCP manager, or someone else's feature catalog, this is the wrong bowl.

What it does

• Runs local coding conversations in a native-feeling Electron window.
• Keeps Pi JSONL sessions, model selection, thinking, streaming, tools, and compaction behavior.
• Works across multiple projects and chats while background runs continue.
• Shows thinking and tool activity in a dense, readable timeline.
• Renders Markdown, syntax highlighting, math, Mermaid, SVG, and images safely.
• Adds local repository search, bounded public web research, image input, steering, and follow-up queues.
• Supports provider API keys and provider-owned OAuth login without exposing stored secrets to the UI.
• Includes recoverable Trash, explicit permission modes, archived chats, and tracked write/edit review with safe per-file Undo.
• Ships a curated capability bundle from source instead of a plugin marketplace.

Make it yours

The source is the product. Fork it, change the conversation, adjust the prompt, curate the skills and tools, and rebuild the app you want. Pho Code does not depend on a separate Pi CLI installation or a marketplace to supply its core capabilities.

macOS is the verified desktop. Linux-compatible path and process behavior is required in the code. Windows is out of scope.

Run it

Pho Code is built from this repository. There is no public installer yet.

You need macOS, Git, and Bun 1.3.14 or newer. Node 22.19.0 or newer is required by supporting tools.

git submodule update --init --recursive
bun install --frozen-lockfile
bun run stage:github-mcp
bun run dev

Then:

1. Choose a local workspace.
2. Sign in through a provider account in Settings if you have not already.
3. Start a session and send a prompt.

A normal run keeps Pi-compatible auth, models, sessions, and permission state under the app's own data directory. PHO_CODE_AGENT_DIR is an explicit override for sharing that directory with another Pi process; Settings labels it as shared.

Package a local macOS app

bun run package:mac
bun run test:packaged

package:mac writes an unsigned Pho Code.app under apps/desktop/release. test:packaged smokes that artifact with isolated user data and a PATH that does not contain pi. A signed hardened-runtime proof is bun run package:mac:proof and fails closed without Developer ID and notarization credentials; it is not a public V4 beta.

Trust

Pi does not include a built-in sandbox. By default it runs with the permissions of the process that launched it.

Pho Code adds named modes, confirmation dialogs, and recoverable Trash. That layer gates recognized operations. It does not contain arbitrary extension code, and it is not a substitute for a container, VM, or operating-system sandbox.

Be honest about the workspace you open. Selected folders and the source-reviewed feature bundle are trusted. Renderer sandboxing protects the desktop UI boundary. It does not sandbox the agent.

Status

This is early, personal software. Expect bugs. The first usable release exists; the daily-driver work is still in progress.

There is no plugin marketplace, no generic MCP manager, and no "paste an extension path" screen. Capabilities enter the app as source-controlled, pinned features.

Acknowledgements

Pho Code is new code. It would not exist in this shape without the projects below.

Agent runtime

• Pi by Earendil Works — the reason this app exists. Pho Code embeds [@earendil-works/pi-coding-agent](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@earendil-works/pi-coding-agent) and [@earendil-works/pi-ai](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@earendil-works/pi-ai) as the agent engine, session format, model runtime, resource loader, and tool loop. The Pi TUI also informed composer usage chrome (context, tokens, cache, cost). See pi.dev.

Desktop and conversation

• T3 Code by T3 Tools — the primary product and UI reference for a dense agent conversation: hidden-inset desktop chrome, zinc theme, sidebar and composer dock, work-entry timeline, Markdown, Shiki, and inline approval cards. Pho Code is not a T3 Code fork and does not control other coding agents.
• pi-gui by Matthew Lam — the closest existing Electron home for Pi. Sidebar density, collapse chrome, and "a native window around the Pi SDK" are the useful lessons. Pho Code does not take pi-gui's worktrees, terminal, or multi-agent orchestration.
• pi-web by agegr — an earlier Pi chat surface that informed the first shell, session list, clipboard copy, and Markdown image lightbox.

Visual language

• Codex desktop — turn-level "Worked for …" collapse and the purple emphasis on the highest thinking level. Visual inspiration only; no Codex source is in this repository.
• Cursor desktop — shell chrome: sidebar actions, soft panels, composer footer selectors, empty-session hero, and inline @ chips. Visual inspiration only; no Cursor source is in this repository.
• Beautiful UI by Shane Levine — optional AI-native interface patterns.
• Simple Icons — provider mark path data.
• Gruvbox, Catppuccin, Flexoki, GitHub Primer, and Atom One Dark — palette values mapped onto Pho Code's theme tokens.

Baked capabilities

• @gotgenes/pi-permission-system by Chris Lasher — the first baked feature: policy, confirm/select/input host UI, and the permission modes Settings exposes.
• @ff-labs/fff-node by Dmitry Kovalenko, with tool names informed by @ff-labs/pi-fff — workspace-scoped local retrieval and @ suggestions. Pho Code owns the adapter and index location; it does not load the Pi TUI extension.
• pi-web-access by Nico Bailon — policy, DuckDuckGo parsing, and YouTube URL detection that informed the application-owned pho-web tools. Pho Code does not load that extension.
• Jina Reader / Search — keyless HTTP search/extraction used by pho-web alongside HTML search engines and for thin JS pages. Queries and target URLs on that path are disclosed to jina.ai.
• Readability, linkedom, and Turndown — public-page extraction behind fetch_content.

T3 Code, pi-gui, and pi-web are design and product references. They are not the application base.