My AI coding flow was burning tokens to do things code should do
The author discusses their transition from complex AI coding flows to a simpler, more deterministic approach using Pi Agent. They highlight the inefficiencies of relying on commands and agents, which often led to unnecessary token consumption. By adopting a modular system, they have improved the reliability of their coding processes and reduced costs.
- ▪The author moved from using opencode to Pi Agent for a more streamlined coding flow.
- ▪They emphasize the importance of determinism in coding processes to avoid unnecessary token usage.
- ▪The author created extensions for Pi that allow for more reliable execution of tasks like code reviews and report generation.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 35 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
- ▪ Find where claude code burns your tokens — Reddit
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Record
| Original publisher | Hacker News (Newest) |
| Canonical URL | https://geerttheys.substack.com/p/i-agent-deterministic-coding-flow |
| Publication time | Mon, 25 May 2026 04:22:34 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-25T04:37:35.966Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-25T04:37:35.966Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | MFI26IYU-n03 · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
My AI coding flow was burning tokens to do things code should doHow Pi Agent and a few deterministic extensions fixed my flowGeert TheysMay 25, 2026ShareMost AI coding flows are getting more elaborate. Mine got simpler.If you spend most of your day in a coding agent and have started wondering whether some of it should just be a script, this is for you. I am not going to cover MCP servers, skill authoring, or how Pi compares feature by feature to Claude Code. Plenty of other posts do that.Credit where it is due: Robert Douglass built Spec Kitty and it is a good tool. It sits on top of a coding harness, follows Spec-Driven Development, and gives you governance and auditability. It will work for plenty of teams. I went the other way.I started with an open source harness called opencode.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (Newest).
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