Goodbye Claude, Hello Pi

Re:Goodbye Claude, Hello Pi by peteforde on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:07AM (#50411882)

I've been using Cursor for a few years now, and while I'm well aware that it's more expensive, from a UX perspective I am 95% happy. There's still a few things like not being able to move conversations between folders or computers, but big picture, a lot to love. It's just a really coherent dev experience.

When I read what folks write about CC and TUIs it all sounds... really, really awful and I kind of don't get why any wouldn't want to use Cursor. I'm posting this to see if anyone wants to explain how/why I might want to ditch Cursor and go all in on Claude or Codex or Pi or anything else. I'm open to being convinced!

Mostly, I just want to understand. My sense of CC is that it's great for folks who are looking to spend lots of money having 4 agents one-shot an entire application from a single prompt so that they can pick their favourite when they wake up. Is that an absurd perspective? If so, tell me how you use it.

I'm someone working on fairly significant but personal projects; I have a very clear picture in my head about what I'd like to get so I tend to write extremely dense, detail-filled prompts and go through a multi-revision planning phase before kicking off agent mode on a feature. The apps I build tend to be the result of several dozen or several hundred features developed mostly serially, and I am always the bottleneck because of that whole "knowing what I want" thing.

So, that's my usage pattern. Should I be using Claude (or Pi)?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Goodbye Claude, Hello Pi by cejast on Sunday November 08, 2026 @05:56AM (#50412151)

> The apps I build tend to be the result of several dozen or several hundred features developed mostly serially, and I am always the bottleneck because of that whole "knowing what I want" thing.

This is probably where the disconnect is - the TUI workflow only really clicked when I started working across multiple worktrees at the same time.

It’s not all or nothing. You can still be fully in the loop, read all the code and steer each session towards the outcomes you want. You’re just doing it across multiple branches at the same time and imo it’s easier to do that through the TUI.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Goodbye Claude, Hello Pi by peteforde on Sunday November 08, 2026 @06:46AM (#50412438)

How do you stay effective when working across multiple worktrees at the same time? That is, how do you keep context in your head?

Then when it's all over, how do you evaluate which one to keep?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Goodbye Claude, Hello Pi by cejast on Sunday November 08, 2026 @09:19AM (#50413593)

This is indeed a challenge and there is a practical limit to how many you can manage at once. It really depends on what I’m working on, for a sufficiently large enough project there are lots of independent tasks that can be delivered in isolation and so it’s rarely a case of babysitting all of them in realtime.

I tend to have one session that I’m actively focused on as my primary session, everything else I come back to every ~5-10 minutes to nudge them along while I’m waiting on the ‘main thread’. If my core task demands more of my time to think then I check less often.

The important thing is to find what works for you. If Cursor is giving you enough productivity then that’s awesome, carry on with it! I would recommend trying out other workflows, weighing up the pros/cons yourself and ultimately find what works for you. TUI-driven development isn’t for everyone in the same way not everyone likes to use vim and that’s okay.

[ Parent | on HN ]