{"repo":"itayinbarr/little-coder","free":true,"listed":false,"github":"https://github.com/itayinbarr/little-coder","clone":"git clone https://github.com/itayinbarr/little-coder.git","description":"A harness optimized to smaller LLMs","language":"TypeScript","stars":2435,"topics":["ai-coding-assistant","benchmark","code-generation","coding-agent","coding-agents","local-llm","ollama","qwen","small-language-models","tool-use"],"license":"Apache-2.0","category":"dev-tools","readme_excerpt":"little-coder A coding agent tuned for small local models, built on top of pi. The research story behind all this — why scaffold–model fit matters, how a 9.7 B Qwen beat frontier entries on Aider Polyglot, and what the load-bearing mechanisms actually do — is written up on Substack: Honey, I Shrunk the Coding Agent . Start there if you want the \"why\"; stay here for the \"how\". How it relates to pi pi is the minimal substrate — agent loop, multi-provider API, TUI, session tree, compaction, extension model. Four built-in tools (read / write / edit / bash) and a 1000-token system prompt. little-coder is pi + 30-odd extensions + 30 skill markdown files + a Python benchmark harness . It doesn't fork pi or shadow its CLI — pi is a plain dependency in package.json , and everything little-coder-specific lives under .pi/extensions/ , skills/ , and benchmarks/ . It ships no npm install scripts ; the launcher does everything at launch time. The launcher runs pi with --no-extensions and wires in exactly the bundled set. That's what keeps the cold-start context around 7k tokens and makes behavior predictable — the set that loads is the set that ships, and nothing in your working directory changes it mid-task. The consequence is that a globally pi install 'd package won't load inside little-coder by default, because pi install registers into pi's settings and --no-extensions skips those. You have three opt-in ways around that, none of which change the default: drop your own extensions in /.c","default_branch":null,"files":null,"tree":[],"storefront":"/r/itayinbarr","claimed":false,"request_supported":{"post":"https://gitbuyer.com/r/itayinbarr/little-coder/request-supported","requests":0},"note":"indexed from public GitHub; nothing is for sale on this page. Clone it from GitHub. Paid listings live at /search."}