cero-pi

A cero-flavoured wrapper around pi-coding-agent with an animated startup banner, a stats panel inspired by gentle-pi, the Cortex memory + CeroSpace Bridge MCP servers wired into the defaults, and LLM calls routed through your Claude Code CLI subscription — no extra API billing.

cero-pi does not fork pi. It depends on the published npm package @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent and adds value on top. See NOTICE.md for full attribution.

Install

# from this repo (dev)
cd E:\cero-pi
npm install
npm run banner      # render the banner only
npm start           # banner + stats + pi

# global (once published)
npm install -g cero-pi
cero-pi             # or `cpi`

What it adds

1. Animated ASCII banner. Purple → amber shimmer that sweeps across "CERO-PI" once on launch, then settles into a static gradient. 24-bit ANSI; falls back to plain text if NO_COLOR is set or stdout is not a TTY. Source: src/banner.mjs.

2. Stats panel. Reads real values for GIT, MCP, PI, PATH, PLUGINS, EXTENSIONS, and the cero-pi version. Nothing is fabricated — missing values show — or 0. Source: src/stats.mjs.

3. MCP defaults template. templates/mcp.json ships entries for:

   • cortex — Cortex memory MCP (persistent cross-session memory).
   • cerospace-browser — CeroSpace Bridge MCP (drive the real browser).
   • postiz — optional, off by default.

   cero-pi never auto-modifies your pi config. Copy the entries you want into ~/.pi/agent/mcp.json (or wherever your pi version reads MCP config from) and replace the placeholder tokens.

4. Claude Code CLI routing (default on). cero-pi vendors the pi-claude-cli extension into vendor/pi-claude-cli/ and loads it via pi's -e flag, so LLM calls are served by your local claude CLI — i.e. your Claude Pro/Max subscription, with no separate API billing. Requirements: claude on your PATH and signed in. If claude is missing, cero-pi warns and falls back to pi's normal provider. Disable routing with --no-claude; override the routed model with the CERO_PI_MODEL env var (default claude-opus-4-7).

Flags

cero-pi [cero-pi flags] [-- pi args]

cero-pi flags:
  --banner-only    Render the banner and exit
  --stats-only     Render the stats panel and exit
  --no-banner      Skip banner + stats, go straight to pi
  --no-animate     Render banner without shimmer animation
  --no-claude      Don't route through Claude Code CLI (uses pi's API provider)
  --version        Print cero-pi and pi versions
  --help           Show this help

Everything else is forwarded verbatim to the underlying pi CLI.

Architecture

cero-pi (this package)
├── bin/cero-pi.mjs           Entry. Banner + stats, plans Claude routing, spawns pi.
├── src/banner.mjs            ANSI Shadow font + scan-line shimmer renderer.
├── src/stats.mjs             Reads git/MCP/pi info for the panel.
├── templates/mcp.json        Cortex + Bridge MCP server templates.
├── vendor/pi-claude-cli/     Vendored Claude-CLI provider extension (MIT, by rchern).
└── (depends on)
    └── @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent   ← actual coding agent, by Mario Zechner.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for cero-pi itself and NOTICE.md for upstream attribution. The pi coding agent is © Mario Zechner and the earendil-works team, also MIT.