# Pi pod Pi pod runs sessions of the [[Pi Mono|Pi coding agent]] in isolated sandboxes ("pods") on a server you host, and you compose the environments they run in. Its author, edverma2, shared it on [[Hacker News]] as a Show HN in October 2026, where it got 121 points and 46 comments. According to the author, lab tools like [[Claude Code]] and Codex lock you into one provider, and the provider-agnostic tools charge per token. Neither lets you fully customize the harness, and both run on someone else's infrastructure. Pi pod gives you Pi's hackable [[AI Agent Harness]] on your own VM instead. ## Features - Sessions run in containers inside your own VM - Configuration is layered, with org-, user- and project-level config for Pi and agents - The terminal UI renders locally on your machine, so keystrokes don't lag over SSH - **Mobile apps** for iOS and Android are native but not released yet; you can build them from the Swift and Kotlin sources on GitHub ## What the HN discussion raised Several commenters said containers aren't a security boundary, and pushed for microVMs ([[Firecracker]], Kata, smolvm) or [[gVisor]] / systemd-nspawn instead. The author's answer on the isolation model was thin. Other points from the discussion: - Build vs. buy. Building your own "good enough" agent sandbox is cheap now, so some would rather roll their own than trust a shared tool. Others see maintaining a harness as a distraction - The space is crowded (kagent, VibePod, omnigent, openshell, T3 Code, bakedpi...), and everyone seems to be building their own harness or sandbox - A "cloud computer for agents" is "just a VM on someone else's computer", which is exactly the argument for self-hosting ## References - https://pipod.dev/ - Show HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49937304 ## Related - [[Pi Mono]] - [[AI Agent Harness]] - [[AI Agents]] - [[Self-hosting]] - [[Firecracker]] - [[gVisor]] - [[Claude Code]]