Percho

Highly customizable desktop GUI for the Pi coding agent — the same engine as the Pi CLI, in a clean visual interface. Multi-session chat, visual tool approvals, built-in subagents, UI plugins, and custom themes.

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Demo

Chat

Custom background & dark theme

Why Percho?

Percho embeds the official Pi SDK (@earendil-works/pi-coding-agent) in the Electron main process. It is not a fork and not a reimplementation — it runs the same engine as the Pi CLI and inherits Pi's native strengths:

• Extensibility — supports Pi's TypeScript extensions, skills, and prompt templates. Percho manages user-level resources independently; project-local resources remain compatible, with a trust prompt before loading. Adapt Pi to your workflows, no forking required.
• Private user data — sessions, accounts, and model settings live in ~/.percho/agent/, separate from Pi CLI. On first launch, you can copy data from the old directory while keeping the original, or start fresh. Project-level .pi/ stays compatible. See migration and recovery.
• Providers — subscriptions (Claude Pro/Max, ChatGPT Plus/Pro Codex, GitHub Copilot, logged in via an in-app OAuth flow) and API keys for Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Bedrock, and more; custom providers and base-URL overrides for relay gateways.

And for those who prefer a GUI over a TUI:

• Highly customizable UI — swap tool-call cards, drop in desk-pet overlays (two whale-maid pets ship built in), or extend the settings panel via UI plugins
• Visual permission gates — approve or deny each tool call from a dock, backed by a per-tool rule engine
• A collapsible project/session sidebar, draggable pinned-session pills, per-session composer drafts, and a follow-up queue with undo
• Built-in subagents — a scout plus your own agent definitions, parallel task fan-outs, and run cards you can click to inspect the sub-session read-only
• Context evaporation (on by default) — stale tool outputs age into compact stubs, keeping long sessions within budget
• Unified error system — in-chat error cards with one-click retry, an auto-retry status line, and full-page renderer crash recovery
• Solid session workspace — fork from assistant turns or selected context, recall your own message back into the composer, todo panel, per-turn diff sidebar, slash-command menu and @-file completion
• Streaming markdown rendering, image previews, message copy
• Agent-initiated image display — a built-in show_image tool lets the agent deliberately show you images inline (single or grouped), without turning every tool result into noise
• Custom background image with adjustable overlay dimming, light/dark/system themes
• Cross-device — monitor sessions from a phone or tablet browser via QR code; optionally enable remote prompts, stop generation, and allow-once/deny approval decisions

Download

Prebuilt installers are published on the Releases page.

Platform	Download
macOS (Apple Silicon)	percho-mac-arm64.dmg
macOS (Intel)	percho-mac-x64.dmg
Windows	percho-windows-x64.exe (installer) or percho-windows-x64.zip
Linux (x64)	percho-linux-x86_64.AppImage

Builds are ad-hoc signed (no Developer ID certificate). On macOS, the first launch after a download may show "Apple cannot verify Percho is free from malware" — that's Gatekeeper blocking an un-notarized app. To open it:

1. System Settings → Privacy & Security → scroll to the bottom → click Open Anyway next to the Percho entry, then confirm with your password or Touch ID (recommended).

   

2. Or in Terminal: xattr -cr "/Applications/Percho.app".

Updates are checked in-app. On Windows they download and install there too (click download, then restart). On macOS the ad-hoc signed build cannot self-install, so the app jumps to the Releases page — and a freshly downloaded version will hit Gatekeeper once again. On Windows, click "More info" → "Run anyway" when SmartScreen appears.

On Linux: make the AppImage executable before first launch (chmod +x percho-linux-x86_64.AppImage). On Ubuntu 22.04+/24.04+ and derivatives, install libfuse2 first — AppImages mount via FUSE 2, which is no longer preinstalled. Linux builds download and install updates in-app.

Development

Prerequisites: Node.js >= 22.19.

npm install
npm run dev

npm workspaces monorepo, three packages: packages/shared (IPC contracts), packages/backend (the only place that imports the Pi SDK), packages/desktop (Electron + React 19 + Tailwind 4 + Zustand). Common commands: npm run typecheck / test / lint / build / dist.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide. If you are in China and the Electron binary download stalls, set ELECTRON_MIRROR=https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/electron/ first.

Disclaimer

Percho is a community project. It is not built by or affiliated with the Pi team (earendil-works).

License

MIT