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Smithers provides deterministic orchestration (workflow graph, approvals, retries, durable state). PI provides adaptive agent capabilities (providers, models, extensions, skills, prompt templates). Use both when you need deterministic execution with flexible agent behavior.

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Integration Modes

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1) PI as Workflow Agent

import { PiAgent } from "smithers-orchestrator";

const pi = new PiAgent({
  provider: "openai",
  model: "gpt-5.2-codex",
  mode: "text",
});

{/* outputs comes from createSmithers() */}
<Task id="implementation" output={outputs.implementation} agent={pi}>
  {`Implement feature X and explain tradeoffs.`}
</Task>
PiAgent supports all PI CLI flags: provider/model, tools, extensions, skills, prompt templates, themes, and sessions. Text mode uses --print by default; JSON/RPC modes set --mode and omit --print. PI sessions are first-class hijack targets. smithers hijack <runId> --target pi reopens the PI session for local steering.

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2) PI Server Client

Use pi-plugin to drive Smithers server APIs from a PI extension or any Node process: 
import { runWorkflow, approve, streamEvents } from "smithers-orchestrator/pi-plugin";

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3) Hybrid: PI Extensibility + Smithers Orchestration

  • Keep orchestration in Smithers (<Sequence>, <Parallel>, <Branch>, <Loop>).
  • Run adaptive logic in PI tasks (extensions/skills/provider overrides).
Patterns:
  1. PI skill-driven coding task inside a Smithers <Task>.
  2. PI extension command that starts/resumes Smithers workflows via server API or pi-plugin.
  3. Smithers workflow output persisted to SQLite and consumed by later PI-assisted tasks.

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Hijacking PI Sessions

PI is a native-session hijack backend.
  • Live run: Smithers watches PI’s event stream, waits between blocking tool calls, then hands off the session.
  • Finished/cancelled run: Smithers reopens the latest persisted PI session.
  • Relaunch uses the stored session ID: pi --session <id>.
  • Clean exit resumes the workflow automatically.
Session persistence:
  • PiAgent defaults noSession to true for one-shot calls.
  • For workflow hijack/resume/streaming, Smithers keeps session persistence enabled automatically.
  • No need to set mode: "json" manually for hijack support.

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Setup

  1. Install PI CLI and add to PATH.
  2. Configure PI credentials via env/config (prefer over CLI args for API keys).
  3. Instantiate PiAgent with explicit options in workflows.
  4. For server-driven workflows, use pi-plugin.
pi --version
bun run test

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Design Guidance

Use PiAgent tasks whenUse Smithers-native tasks when
You need PI capabilities inside deterministic workflowsYou need strict reproducibility and narrow tool contracts
You want PI calls as auditable workflow steps

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Limitations

Chat-provider integration lives in host applications, not this repo.