pi-discrimen

Connect Pi to a Discrimen router. Use automatic routing, choose an underlying model from Pi's model picker, and see which model serves each response in the footer.

Discrimen · Auto → Qwen3.8 Flash Next

The package is pi-discrimen, and the provider and router are Discrimen. Requires Pi 1.0.4 or newer and Node 22.19 or newer. Older @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent and GSD builds are not supported by this release.

Install and connect

Install from npm:

pi install npm:pi-discrimen
pi

Inside Pi:

/login discrimen
/discrimen auto

Login asks for the router URL and a client API key. Paste either the root URL or its /v1 URL; reverse-proxy prefixes are supported. The key prompt is masked. The extension verifies access to /v1/models before Pi saves the credential. Pi stores the key and its associated URL in ~/.pi/agent/auth.json, respecting PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR if set. It does not put secrets in project settings.

/discrimen auto selects automatic routing for the current session. Open /model, select Discrimen — Auto, and press Ctrl+S to make it the default for new sessions. The extension leaves your existing default alone until you save a new one.

You need network access to the router, including your VPN if it is private. An administrator can issue a separate client key for each person. Admin keys are unnecessary for this integration.

Update the extension

For an npm installation, run this in your terminal:

pi update --extensions

This updates your unpinned Pi packages, including pi-discrimen. Restart Pi or run /reload in an existing session to load the updated extension. Your saved Discrimen login is kept; you do not need to enter the router URL or API key again.

If you installed a specific version, such as npm:pi-discrimen@0.1.1, it stays pinned. Switch to the latest release and receive future updates with:

pi install npm:pi-discrimen

Then restart Pi or run /reload. Git tags and commits also stay pinned; install the desired newer Git tag explicitly. For a local checkout, pull the latest source in that directory, then restart Pi or run /reload.

Opening /model automatically refreshes the available models. To request a refresh separately, run inside Pi:

/discrimen refresh
/model

If prompted to connect, run /login discrimen first. If you still have the old pi-discrimin package, follow Migrating from the misspelled package; updating it does not switch to the corrected package name.

Models and commands

Command	Action
/login discrimen	Connect, change router, or replace the API key
/discrimen auto	Select the router's default model
/model	Refresh the catalogue and choose Auto, Expert, or an underlying model
/discrimen refresh	Fetch the latest catalogue, including additions and removals
/discrimen status	Show the configured URL and current catalogue size
/logout	Remove the saved Discrimen credential through Pi's provider menu

The catalogue is discovered at startup and refreshed whenever you open /model while Pi's network access is enabled. The picker shows the current list while it fetches additions and removals in the background. /discrimen refresh also fetches a fresh catalogue. Discovery has an eight-second timeout. An outage retains the last successful catalogue for the same connection in the running process. Changing connections clears the previous fleet; catalogues are not saved to disk.

If an older installation reports refreshed 1 models and only shows Auto after login, update to 0.1.2 or newer, restart Pi, and open /model. Versions 0.1.0 and 0.1.1 could lose the saved router URL during refresh. Your saved login remains valid; no new API key is needed.

Auto and Expert leave reasoning_effort unset so the router decides whether to think. A named thinking-capable model exposes Pi's normal thinking controls. Model IDs and aliases from the catalogue are sent unchanged to the router.

The footer reads X-LLM-Backend-Model-Name, falling back to X-LLM-Backend-Model, for every HTTP response, including successive calls in a tool loop. It clears the previous answer's identity when a new call starts or another provider is selected. If a proxy strips these headers, it says backend unreported. For Expert, the header identifies the reported answering model; it does not enumerate the whole expert panel. Stream failures after the headers arrive remain visible through Pi's normal error UI.

Context limits come from context_length; missing limits use a conservative 32,768-token fallback. If no output limit is advertised, the client uses an 8,192-token cap, limited to a quarter of the context window. Costs display as zero because the router catalogue does not provide prices; this is not a claim that serving the models is free.

Environment-only setup

For CI or a temporary shell session, supply DISCRIMEN_URL and DISCRIMEN_API_KEY through your environment or secret manager:

export DISCRIMEN_URL=https://router.example.com
# Set DISCRIMEN_API_KEY using your secret manager.
pi --provider discrimen --model default

A saved login takes precedence. Log out of Discrimen before changing connections using environment variables. Environment credentials remain usable after logout until you unset them.

Migrating from the misspelled package

The initial prototype was published as pi-discrimin. Replace an npm installation with:

pi remove npm:pi-discrimin
pi install npm:pi-discrimen

If you installed a pinned version or Git source, use pi list to find the old source and pass that exact source to pi remove. Restart Pi, run /login discrimen, then /discrimen auto, and save your new default in /model. Saved credentials under the old discrimin provider are not migrated. For environment setup, rename DISCRIMIN_URL and DISCRIMIN_API_KEY to DISCRIMEN_URL and DISCRIMEN_API_KEY.

Try a local checkout

pi -e /path/to/pi-discrimen

To keep it installed:

pi install /path/to/pi-discrimen

Pi supplies the runtime dependencies and loads the TypeScript source directly. There is no build step. Restart Pi or run /reload after installing in another terminal.

Distribute it

npm: easiest for users

The package is published as pi-discrimen. Users install it with:

pi install npm:pi-discrimen

See Update the extension for upgrading an installation. For reproducible installs, use pi install npm:pi-discrimen@0.1.2; a pinned installation stays on that version until its package specification is changed.

CI releases from GitHub

j842/pi-discrimen is the primary source repository and issue tracker. .github/workflows/ci.yaml verifies pushes to main and pull requests. .github/workflows/publish.yaml publishes v* tags using npm Trusted Publishing, with short-lived GitHub OIDC credentials. No npm token or repository secret is required.

The release workflow uses GitHub-hosted Ubuntu runners, Node 24, and an npm CLI with Trusted Publishing support. It checks the release tag and repository metadata, typechecks, runs the tests, packs the package, and tests the extracted archive with the real Pi CLI before publishing that same archive. Stable versions use npm's latest channel; prereleases such as v0.2.0-beta.1 use next. npm adds provenance automatically.

One-time setup:

1. Push the source and workflow files to https://github.com/j842/pi-discrimen.git and enable GitHub Actions. Keep package.json's repository.url set to git+https://github.com/j842/pi-discrimen.git; npm checks that it matches.

2. Publish the new package name once from a terminal using your npm account's 2FA (no bypass token is needed): npm login, then npm publish --access public. Complete the authentication challenge. Skip this step if pi-discrimen is already published under your account.

3. Open the npm package settings, find Trusted Publisher, and select GitHub Actions. Enter:

   Setting	Value
   Organization or user	j842
   Repository	pi-discrimen
   Workflow filename	publish.yaml
   Environment name	Leave blank
   Allowed actions	Enable direct publishing with npm publish

   Enter only the workflow filename, without .github/workflows/. Allowing only staged publishing will not authorize this workflow's npm publish.

4. Complete the first CI publication within two days of creating the trusted publisher; npm expires an unused configuration after that interval.

5. After a successful trusted publication, npm's Publishing access setting can be changed to Require two-factor authentication and disallow tokens. Trusted Publishing continues working. Revoke any unused npm publishing token and remove the old NPM_TOKEN secret if one was created.

See npm's Trusted Publishing guide. Restrict creation of v* tags to release maintainers using GitHub repository rules. After the first manual publication of pi-discrimen@0.1.0, release the next version from a clean checkout with origin pointing to GitHub:

npm version patch
git push origin main
git push origin "v$(node -p 'require("./package.json").version')"

npm version updates the package and extension manifest together, commits the version change, and creates its tag. Use minor, major, or an explicit version instead of patch when appropriate. Never reuse an already-published version. Release tags must exactly match package.json, for example v0.1.2 for version 0.1.2. If npm rejects the OIDC authentication, check the exact publisher fields and allowed actions above; recreate an expired publisher configuration and rerun the failed workflow.

For a manual publication, enable account 2FA on npm, run npm login, then npm publish --access public and complete the authentication challenge. Logging in alone is insufficient without 2FA. See npm's 2FA setup instructions.

The repository currently has no dependency lockfile, so CI uses npm install. Commit an npm-generated package-lock.json and change that step to npm ci when establishing a reproducible dependency baseline.

Install directly from GitHub

Install a tagged release from the public repository:

pi install git:github.com/j842/pi-discrimen@v0.1.2

Private repositories require the user's Git credentials. A public repository is simplest for sharing with people outside your organisation. Credentials for the router are configured separately after installation and never belong in the package. A tagged installation stays pinned to that tag.

Downloadable archive

npm pack creates pi-discrimen-0.1.2.tgz. Share that file; recipients extract it into a permanent directory and install the extracted package by local path:

mkdir pi-discrimen
tar -xzf pi-discrimen-0.1.2.tgz -C pi-discrimen --strip-components=1
pi install ./pi-discrimen

Local installations keep referring to that directory, so leave it in place.

Development and verification

npm install
npm run verify

Tests cover authentication and cancellation, model metadata, saved-login refreshes, Pi's model picker across catalogue changes and outages, terminal-safe footer text, and a real Pi CLI session with a fixture HTTP transport. The CLI test loads a saved login, discovers and refreshes the models, makes two streamed requests, executes Pi's read tool against a temporary file, and observes both backend identities in the footer API. It requires no router key or running model and does not alter your Pi configuration. A production router smoke test remains useful before a release to confirm the deployed router's protocol and headers.

Only src/, package metadata, this README, the extension manifest, and the licence are included in the npm archive. Tests and development dependencies are excluded.

See Pi's package documentation and provider documentation.