Orbit

Orbit is a native desktop workbench for the pi coding agent — a chat-style GUI rendered entirely in Rust on GPUI, the GPU-accelerated UI framework Zed is built on. It speaks the pi CLI's RPC protocol directly over stdio: no browser, no webview, no Node.

Sessions you create in Orbit and in the terminal are the same sessions (~/.pi/agent/sessions/), managed by pi's own session manager.

Screenshots

A live session — streaming transcript, tool rows, and the composer:

Usage — requests, tokens, cost, and cache, read from your own sessions:

New task	Review
Git	Providers
Plugins	Skills
Models	Appearance
General	Agent

Features

Chat and transcript

• Chat-style agent sessions — composer with model selection, thinking effort, follow-up queueing, mid-run steering, cancel, and streaming replies
• Choose Enter’s behavior in Settings → Agent → Behavior: queue a follow-up (default) or steer the running task. Alt/Option+Enter uses the other mode; ⌘⇧Enter / Ctrl+Shift+Enter always steers. Compact hints immediately left of the context-window indicator show both sending modes while the agent is working. Steering takes effect after the current response and tools finish; idle Enter sends normally, and Shift+Enter inserts a new line.
• Workflow modes — scope a session to Plan, Build, or Ask: Plan and Ask are read-only (write tools disabled, bash gated), so you can explore and plan before switching to Build
• GPU-rendered transcript — virtualized so cost is independent of message count, with stick-to-latest streaming and coalesced commits
• GFM markdown and syntax-highlighted code; highlighting is paint-only so streaming code blocks never reflow, and Mermaid fences stay copyable code blocks
• In-transcript find (⌘F) and a full-window image lightbox
• Tool activity — bash, edit, read, and thinking rows drawn natively, expanding into Arguments/Output cards with per-section copy

Sessions

• Grouped by project, persistent, reopenable, and cross-workspace
• Orbit-owned project list — remove a workspace from the sidebar without deleting pi's sessions
• Sort projects by last activity, recently added, name, or session count
• Rename, pin, clone, or delete sessions, and copy a session id; pinned sessions sort first
• Address sessions by position — ⌘1…⌘9 (Ctrl+1…9) opens the Nth visible session, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab cycle them
• Sessions written by the CLI or another window refresh the sidebar live
• Background turn notifications — a desktop banner and alert sound when the window isn't frontmost, an in-app toast otherwise, and a heads-up when a run is waiting on an extension dialog

Safeguards

• Access modes — Supervised, Auto-accept edits, or Full access, chosen from the composer
• Enforced by a bundled pi extension that hooks tool_call and confirms mutating calls the mode does not auto-approve
• An inline bar above the composer offers Allow once / Always allow this tool / Deny (↑ ↓ ⏎ esc), with the allowlist recorded per mode
• A confirmation guard, not a sandbox — pi ships no sandbox, and Orbit does not add one

Review and Git

• Review side pane with selectable sources — Last Turn (exactly what one agent turn changed, from per-turn checkpoints), Uncommitted, Unstaged, Staged, Committed, and Branch — refreshed when a run settles
• Diff view controls: collapse or expand each file, wrap or pan long lines, unified or side-by-side rows, docked / full-page / minimized, and full keyboard operation (Tab focus stops, arrows, n / p between files, [ / ] between hunks)
• Git page for Changes / History / Graph / Stashes: staging, commit (⌘↵), stash push/pop/apply/drop, sync, push (including force-with-lease), pull, fetch, merge, and rebase, with recovery actions for rejected pushes and conflicts
• Git page's Issues and Pull requests tabs through gh: browse and filter, file issues and PRs, comment, apply labels, close/reopen, review, merge, and check out a PR's branch — with repository templates and an AI Generate action that drafts a title and body from the branch, its commits, optional notes, and the repo's own template

Explorer and Files

• Project panel (⌘⇧E) — a gitignore-aware workspace tree with expand/collapse, filter, hidden-files toggle, devicons, M/A/D/R/U git badges, and keyboard navigation
• File operations from the tree: new file, new folder, rename, and delete to Trash, plus open / reveal / copy path actions
• Files page with a tab strip and an editor for the active workspace: syntax-highlighted editable buffers, Markdown Edit/Preview, images, debounced autosave (and ⌘S) with dirty/saving state, and honest read-only guards for binary, oversized, truncated, and non-UTF-8 files

Terminal

• Integrated terminal (⌘J) — a real login shell in a resizable bottom panel, built on alacritty_terminal for PTY and VT/ANSI emulation and rendered natively by GPUI: scrollback, click-drag selection (⌘C/⌘V), bracketed paste, a blinking cursor, a per-theme ANSI palette, and restart; the shell follows the active workspace

Workbench

• Usage, skills, plugins, models, providers, MCP, appearance, and agent/runtime settings, backed by pi's on-disk data
• MCP — manage pi's MCP servers (global and per project) in Settings → MCP: add / edit / validate, a ${NAME} secret store, live status and tool lists from pi mcp list --json, and applying changes by respawning pi with the session preserved
• Providers — pi's live catalog plus custom endpoints (models.json), with API-key or OAuth sign-in and usage meters
• Plugins — install pi packages from npm, git, or a local path, global or per project; update checks and update/remove in place
• Models — read from pi's own runtime, with a default session model and thinking level (Settings → Agent) applied to every new session; the choice lives in Orbit's own store and leaves pi's global settings alone
• Auto session titles — a bundled pi extension names a session after its first turn, with a model picker and an on/off toggle in Settings → Agent
• Appearance — Light / Dark / System, independent light and dark theme palettes, background image, fonts, sizes, spacing density, and interface language (English, 简体中文, 日本語, 한국어, Español, Français, Deutsch, Português do Brasil, Русский, Italiano, or the system language). System follows OS appearance changes live; new installations use System, while existing theme choices are preserved.

Native

• A command palette (⌘P / ⌘K) and a registry-driven shortcut layer: the keymap, palette chips, and the Settings → Shortcuts reference all read from one command table, with Tab focus traversal, context-aware keys (review tree, pickers, dialogs), custom macOS window chrome, native dialogs, and reduce-motion
• Zed's design tokens (spacing and density, type, icon and button sizes, elevation, motion) in theme/tokens.rs, scaling with the UI font size and Spacing Density settings — settings, usage, the sidebar, transcript chrome, the palette, pickers, modals, the Explorer, the Git panel, and the terminal use them today, with the composer the last major surface
• Open in — open the workspace in a detected editor or terminal right from the header, with each app's real icon
• A first-run dependency check for pi, node, and git that reports anything missing with its install command
• Signed releases: macOS .dmg (signed + notarized, universal) and .tar.gz, Windows .exe / .zip, Linux .deb / .tar.gz, with signed in-app updates on every platform

Structure

┌───────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Orbit (Rust) — GPUI, Metal-rendered UI   │
│  crates/orbit-pi                          │
│  window, transcript, markdown, workbench  │
└──────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
               │ newline-delimited JSON RPC over stdio
┌──────────────▼────────────────────────────┐
│  pi CLI (child process, per open session) │
│  pi --mode rpc — sessions, models, tools  │
└──────────────┬────────────────────────────┘
               │
┌──────────────▼────────────────────────────┐
│  ~/.pi/agent/ — sessions, config, usage   │
│  (same data the pi CLI uses)              │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘

Orbit spawns the pi CLI as a child process per open session and speaks its RPC protocol: JSON requests on stdin, JSON-line events on stdout (text/thinking deltas, tool calls, question dialogs, settle signals). Everything user-facing is painted by GPUI on Metal — no DOM, no CSS, no browser engine. The agent runtime stays pi itself, so the model catalog, thinking levels, and persistence remain pi's own.

Project layout

crates/orbit-pi/      The GPUI app — window, transcript, markdown, workbench
crates/orbit-analytics/  Privacy-first, provider-independent product telemetry
crates/orbit-rpc/     pi CLI RPC client (process lifecycle + JSONL protocol)
contrib/              Bundled pi extensions (access guard, auth/quota bridges)
scripts/make-dmg.sh   Build a signed .app + DMG (arm64 / universal)
assets/icons/         App icon (logo-icon.png source, icon.icns, icon.png)
marketing/            Next.js landing page
PRODUCT.md            Product definition, capabilities, constraints
INTENT.md             Architecture decisions + phase plan
AGENT.md              Conventions for agents and humans working on this repo
PRIVACY.md            What anonymous usage analytics does and does not send

Roadmap

Orbit is a workbench, not just a chat window. The confirmed direction lives in PRODUCT.md, architecture decisions in INTENT.md, and shipped work in CHANGELOG.md. Every unchecked item below is open for a pull request — read CONTRIBUTING.md and claim the linked issue before starting.

Planned features

Feature	Area	Description	Status	Tracking
Workflow modes	Composer	Start a session scoped to Plan Mode, Build Mode, or Ask Mode instead of one undifferentiated chat.	Shipped	—
Follow-up on settle	Transcript	Show a queued follow-up inline once a run ends, not only in the compose queue.	Planned	—
Suggested follow-ups	Transcript	Propose 2–3 context-grounded next prompts as composer inserts after a run settles.	Proposed	#10
GitHub client	Workbench	Browse and manage remote commits, graph, issues, and pull requests in-app.	In progress — Issues and Pull requests ship with comments, reviews, merges, and branch checkouts; remote commit browsing remains open	#8
Pi extension support	Workbench	First-class list / install / enable / configure / debug of pi extensions, including community ones.	In progress — Plugins installs, updates, and removes packages; a dedicated extensions surface with enable/configure/debug is still open	#7
Global default model	Models	Pin pi's global default model and thinking effort from within Orbit.	Shipped — Settings → Agent sets the model and thinking level every new session starts on (Orbit's own store; pi's global settings are untouched)	#9
Voice dictation	Composer	Dictate prompts into the composer.	Planned	—
Diff review and terminal	Workbench	Inline diff review and an integrated terminal.	Shipped — Review pane with per-turn checkpoints and view controls, plus a login-shell terminal (⌘J)	—
Parallel sessions	Sessions	Run multiple agents / sessions side by side.	Planned	—
Explorer gaps	Explorer	Quick-open, sticky scroll, and directory folding in the file tree.	Planned — expand/collapse, filter, hidden toggle, and git badges ship today	—
Conversation fork/rewind	Sessions	Branch and rewind a conversation (clone ships today).	Planned	—
Scroll-perf measurement	Performance	On-device measurement of transcript scroll performance.	Planned	—
Zed token migration	Design	Move the remaining surfaces (settings, pickers, command palette, modals, transcript chrome, sidebar rows) onto the Zed design tokens.	In progress — settings, usage, sidebar, transcript chrome, palette, pickers, modals, Explorer, Git panel, and terminal are on the tokens; the composer is the last major surface	—

Contributor checklist

• Workflow modes — Plan Mode / Build Mode / Ask Mode
• Follow-up on settle — show a queued follow-up inline when a run ends
• Suggested follow-ups — context-grounded next prompts (#10)
• GitHub client — remote commits and graph (issues and PRs ship today) (#8)
• Pi extension support — a dedicated extensions surface; Plugins manages packages today (#7)
• Global default model — set the default model and thinking level for new sessions (#9)
• Voice dictation — dictate prompts into the composer
• Diff review and terminal — inline review plus an integrated terminal
• Parallel sessions — multiple agents / sessions at once
• Explorer gaps — quick-open, sticky scroll, directory folding
• Conversation fork/rewind — branch and rewind a session
• Scroll-perf measurement — on-device transcript scroll benchmark

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Setup, checks, and commit conventions live in CONTRIBUTING.md. Orbit is licensed under Apache-2.0; report vulnerabilities per SECURITY.md. Anonymous usage analytics is documented in PRIVACY.md.