Claude Code is notably better than Pi, although I wish them the best of luck in their efforts. As https://c-daniele.github.io/en/posts/2026-05-18-coding-harne... notes, "Pi's lightness comes from a default setup that does not survive contact with reality."

The same post on Claude Code: "Even though the System Prompt and tool descriptions are clearly more verbose, most of the extra tokens encode product features and rational design choices: a memory system, scheduled tasks, sub-agents, plan mode, worktree support. Whether those features are worth paying for depends on your needs. Calling the prompt 'bloated' without looking at the whole picture feels wrong to me."

The "guardrails" are bloat if you're using a proper sandbox. This seems like a matter of using the right harness for the environment it's running in, rather than one always being better than the other.

If only they could add an option to disable features you don't use