Pi-Bolt

The Pi coding agent, compiled ahead of time to native code.
One executable for Linux x86-64, macOS on Apple silicon and Windows x64. No JIT, no Node.js or Bun required.

Pi-Bolt is the Pi you already use, with the same commands, sessions, settings, providers and extensions. Every function is compiled to machine code when the executable is built, so nothing is parsed or JIT-compiled at launch. It starts two to three times sooner than Pi on Bun, uses about a third of its CPU over a session, and handles long answers and large files seven to thirty-five times more cheaply.

_{AMD EPYC 7B13, Linux. Pi-Bolt 0.8.0 against Pi 1.1.0 as released on stock Bun 1.4.2 and Node 24; medians of interleaved runs, lower is better. See Benchmarks.}

Note

Pi-Bolt is an independent fork of Pi, not affiliated with Pi's authors or with Oven.

Install

curl -fsSL https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.sh | sh

On Windows, in PowerShell:

irm https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.ps1 | iex

or in Command Prompt:

powershell -c "irm https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.ps1 | iex"

or npm install -g --allow-scripts=pi-bolt pi-bolt, or bun add -g --trust pi-bolt (the flags let the package manager run the script that puts the Windows executable in place). Then run pi-bolt in your project. Your Pi configuration in ~/.pi/agent is used as is; new to Pi? Run /login to connect a provider. pi-bolt update installs the latest release.

The installer verifies the release signature and offers three optional extensions by OpenSec:

Extension	What it does
opensec-pi-subagents	Specialized agents in separate sessions, parallel workflows and scheduled jobs
opensec-pi-todo	A todo list for the model, shown as a live panel above the editor
opensec-pi-fff	pi-fff's fast fuzzy find, grep and @-mentions, at full speed on the default build

JIT build, for heavy plugins

The default build has no JIT: Pi's own code is compiled machine code, and an extension loaded at run time is interpreted. Light extensions don't notice. For extensions that do heavy work (search, parsing) or use bun:ffi, install the JIT build. (For pi-fff, opensec-pi-fff is as fast on the default build as pi-fff is with the JIT.) Pi itself stays compiled, so it is within about 5% of the default.

curl -fsSL https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.sh | PIBOLT_VARIANT=arm64-jit sh   # macOS
curl -fsSL https://pi-bolt.opensec.in/install.sh | PIBOLT_VARIANT=x64-jit sh     # Linux

On Windows, run $env:PIBOLT_VARIANT = "x64-jit" before the PowerShell command. With npm, keep PIBOLT_VARIANT set in your shell profile; it is read on every run. pi-bolt --version then ends in JIT on, and pi-bolt update keeps the build you chose.

Manual download

Download a build from the latest release, check it against SHA256SUMS, unpack it and run ./pi (on Windows, pi-bolt.exe).

Download	For
pi-bolt-linux-x64.tar.xz	Linux, CPUs with AVX2 (Intel Haswell, AMD Zen and later)
pi-bolt-linux-x64-baseline.tar.xz	Linux, any x86-64 CPU
pi-bolt-darwin-arm64.tar.xz	macOS, Apple silicon
pi-bolt-win32-x64.zip	Windows x64; compiled code on CPUs with AVX2, bytecode on others

-jit builds are for heavy use of plugins loaded at run time; the runtime archive is for compiling plugins in.

Requirements

• Linux x86-64 with glibc 2.17 or later (Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, RHEL/Rocky 8+, Amazon Linux 2). musl is not supported.
• macOS 13 or later on Apple silicon. Install with the installer or npm (Troubleshooting).
• Windows 10 (1809) or later, or Windows 11, on x64. Install with the installer or npm; for problems, see Troubleshooting: Windows.
• Linux and Windows on ARM64 are not available yet.

Pi-Bolt installs next to Pi as pi-bolt, so both can stay installed. Running the installer again updates, reinstalls or uninstalls it.

Benchmarks

Pi-Bolt 0.8.0 against Pi 1.1.0 as released, on stock Bun 1.4.2 and on Node, and against two other fast Pi builds: PiG 0.4.1, the Go port of Pi (based on Pi 1.0.3), and oh-my-pi 18.8.7, a fork of Pi on Bun. All five run interleaved on the same machine; medians, lower is better.

Linux x86-64 (AMD EPYC 7B13)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt	PiG	oh-my-pi	Pi on Bun	Pi on Node 24
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.8 s	92 s	3.7 s	26.9 s	37.2 s
CPU, streaming a 60,000-character answer	4.0 s	20.7 s	3.1 s	43.0 s	41.0 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	187 MB	311 MB	–	275 MB	576 MB
Memory of a session in tmux	24 MB	47 MB	347 MB	92 MB	95 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	294 ms	2,953 ms	3,241 ms	871 ms	1,241 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	80 ms	261 ms	1,752 ms	323 ms	618 ms
Peak memory, one prompt (pi -p)	124 MB	55 MB	468 MB	133 MB	135 MB
Ready to type	45 ms	38 ms	988 ms	128 ms	316 ms

macOS (Apple M5)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt	PiG	oh-my-pi	Pi on Bun	Pi on Node 26
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.5 s	60 s	2.4 s	17.0 s	20.4 s
CPU, streaming a 60,000-character answer	5.8 s	17.0 s	5.4 s	39.0 s	38.5 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	41 MB	355 MB	–	90 MB	2,452 MB
Memory of a session in tmux	27 MB	55 MB	296 MB	67 MB	86 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	170 ms	2,362 ms	2,353 ms	569 ms	931 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	59 ms	236 ms	1,072 ms	232 ms	527 ms
Peak memory, one prompt (pi -p)	72 MB	50 MB	418 MB	120 MB	138 MB
Ready to type	42 ms	38 ms	591 ms	101 ms	352 ms

PiG starts a little sooner and its single-prompt process is smaller; oh-my-pi streams a long answer with a little less CPU. Pi-Bolt uses the least CPU in sessions and per prompt, the least memory over a session, and writes large files fastest. oh-my-pi compacts a long conversation on its own, so the long session does not compare it (–).

Windows x64 (Intel Core i5-1335U laptop; Pi-Bolt 0.8.0, Pi 1.1.0 as released)

Benchmark	Pi-Bolt	Pi on Bun 1.4.2	Pi on Node 24
Writing a 200 KB file through a tool call	0.7 s	38.1 s	26.6 s
CPU, streaming a 60,000-character answer	6.5 s	41.1 s	32.6 s
Memory after a 4.2M-token session	159 MB	248 MB	413 MB
Memory of a session in a terminal (ConPTY)	32 MB	97 MB	60 MB
CPU, interactive session (5 prompts)	291 ms	805 ms	1,125 ms
CPU, one prompt (pi -p)	92 ms	329 ms	544 ms
Ready to type	92 ms	177 ms	311 ms

More charts: time, CPU and memory on Linux

Method, raw data and the macOS and Windows charts: docs/BENCHMARKS.md. (Memory on Windows is the private working set.)

Plugins

Pi extensions work unchanged. The default build has no JIT, so an extension loaded at run time is interpreted; compile the ones you use every day into the executable, where they run as machine code:

scripts/build-pi.sh --plugins my-plugins/plugins.ts --out out/pi-bolt-plugins

See docs/PLUGINS.md.

Pi and Pi-Bolt side by side

Pi-Bolt uses Pi's agent directory (~/.pi/agent: auth, models, sessions, settings), so your Pi setup works in it as it is. It never changes what Pi loads:

• Until you install or remove a package with pi-bolt, Pi-Bolt loads the packages in settings.json's packages, as Pi does.
• The first pi-bolt install or pi-bolt remove gives Pi-Bolt a list of its own, piBolt.packages, made from packages, and changes only that list. Pi keeps using packages (it does not read piBolt). A package you install later with pi install is Pi's; install it with pi-bolt install too to have it in Pi-Bolt.
• OpenSec's extensions (opensec-pi-subagents, opensec-pi-todo, opensec-pi-fff) are Bun builds that only Pi-Bolt runs: they are only ever in Pi-Bolt's list. Pi-Bolt moves them there from packages, where installers before 0.8.4 put them.

So the two can load different packages, for example a todo list each:

{
  "packages": ["npm:@juicesharp/rpiv-todo"],
  "piBolt": { "packages": ["npm:opensec-pi-todo"] }
}

• Each settings file counts on its own: the global one (~/.pi/agent/settings.json) and a project's (.pi/settings.json).
• An empty list ("piBolt": { "packages": [] }) loads no packages from that file in Pi-Bolt.
• Both lists install into the same folders (~/.pi/agent/npm and ~/.pi/agent/git, or .pi/npm and .pi/git for a project). Removing a package from Pi-Bolt's list keeps its files when Pi's list still has it. A package in both lists should have the same version in both: each runtime installs the version its own list asks for over the other's.

Herdr

In a Herdr pane, Pi-Bolt shows up as pi-bolt: idle, working (also while background subagents run), or blocked when an extension waits for an answer during a run. It also hands Herdr the command that reopens its session, so a Herdr restart brings the same conversation back in the same pane. There is nothing to install. Pi-Bolt does not load the file herdr integration install pi writes (stock Pi still uses it), and "-builtin:herdr" in the extensions setting turns this off. Restoring a session needs Herdr 0.9.2 or later, with pi-bolt on the Herdr server's PATH: start Herdr from a terminal, not with brew services.

To start other agents in Herdr panes from a Pi-Bolt session, add the third-party pi-herdr (MIT): pi-bolt install npm:@andrewjacop/pi-herdr. Herdr starts Pi agents as pi, so the Pi agents it spawns run stock Pi, which must be installed (Claude Code, Codex and the other agents it supports need only their own CLIs). Pi-Bolt turns off pi-herdr's own report of the Pi-Bolt pane (PI_HERDR_NO_SELF_REPORT=1), so the pane keeps showing pi-bolt and can still be restored.

How it works

1. Bun bundles Pi and compiles it to JavaScriptCore bytecode.
2. An ahead-of-time compiler turns every function into optimized x86-64 or ARM64 machine code, through B3, the back end of JavaScriptCore's top-tier JIT.
3. A prebuilt heap holds Pi's modules already loaded, and is mapped from the executable at launch.
4. A training profile orders the code so that startup touches as few pages as possible.

The compiler builds on oven-sh/WebKit#743. Pi-Bolt ports it to x86-64 and macOS and adds its own code generation and runtime work (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md). packages/ is the Pi release named in sources.json with Pi-Bolt's changes on top; the engine changes are in patches/.

Documentation

Architecture	What the executable contains, how it is built, what happens at launch
Building	Building the runtime and Pi from source, training profiles, tests
Benchmarks	Method, results and raw data
Plugins	Porting Pi extensions and writing them for AOT
Troubleshooting	Diagnostics, environment variables, known limitations
Releasing	CI, releases, signing

Development

git clone https://github.com/opensec-git/Pi-Bolt.git && cd Pi-Bolt
scripts/fetch-runtime.sh            # the released Pi-Bolt runtime (or build it: docs/BUILDING.md)
scripts/prepare-pi.sh               # builds the Pi in this repository
scripts/build-pi.sh                 # out/pi-bolt/pi
tests/aot/run.sh                    # engine tests

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Report security issues privately, as described in SECURITY.md.

Star history

License

MIT. Release executables include Bun (MIT), JavaScriptCore (LGPL-2.0 and BSD), ICU (Unicode License) and Pi (MIT); see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Built on Pi by Mario Zechner and contributors, and Bun by Oven.