[Tech debt]: Harness and context management is absolute garbage #394

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1. GeorgeMA-Strong

   added

   tech-debtRefactor / cleanup / upgradeRefactor / cleanup / upgrade

   triageAwaiting maintainer reviewAwaiting maintainer review

   on Jun 25, 2026
2. github-actions commented on Jun 25, 2026

   

   github-actionsBot

   on Jun 25, 2026 – with GitHub Actions

   Contributor

   More actions

   Thanks for the detailed report and for caring deeply about the design tool experience. You're raising important points about context management, the App.jsx single-file default, and the tool surface for design prototyping.

   Current architecture relevant to your concerns

   • Default source file: In v0.2, the workspace starts with App.jsx as the entry point (per AGENTS.md). The idea is that the agent edits App.jsx and can split components later, but there's no built-in UI to force the agent into a multi-file structure from the start. The scaffold tool (packages/core/src/tools/scaffold.ts) can copy curated starter templates, but they aren't user-configurable.
   • Context / session management: Each design is a pi session (JSONL history). There's currently no "clean context" or "start fresh" button in the UI — the session persists across conversations. That's a known gap and is part of why this issue is labeled tech-debt.
   • Tool surface: The v0.2 agent tools are pi's seven built-ins plus a handful of design-specific tools (ask, scaffold, skill, preview, gen_image, tweaks, todos, done). The user-facing permissions and tool catalog are richer than v0.1 but still evolving.
   • Harness reuse: The project uses @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent (v0.72.1) as the core agent harness. It already provides read, write, edit, bash, grep, find, ls — the same primitives opencode/hermes use. The design-specific tools are layered on top. So the harness is shared; the complaint is that the design layers aren't polished enough.

   What we're doing about it

   This issue is already correctly labeled tech-debt and triage. The maintainers are aware that:

   • Context management (session clear, fresh start) needs a UI.
   • Editable system prompts for user customization are a requested feature.
   • The App.jsx focus vs. multi-file output is a recurring tension — the architecture direction (v0.2 DESIGN.md design systems, workspace files) should eventually support cleaner separation, but it's not there yet.

   For now

   If you haven't already, you can manually delete the workspace folder (.codesign/ in the design directory) between sessions to force a clean start — but that's obviously not a productized solution.

   What would help us most

   1. Which model/provider are you using? (you mentioned GPT-5.5 and Qwen3.6-27B — any specific provider/wire?) Different models respond differently to the same prompt.
   2. A concrete example where the model insisted on App.jsx despite an instruction to use separate files — the exact prompt you used and the output would help us reproduce.
   3. Which tools do you feel are missing for good prototyping? (e.g., a dedicated component explorer, live CSS editing, image asset management)

   Thanks again for taking the time to write this up. The team is actively working on v0.2 agentic features and your points directly inform the roadmap.

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   Open-CoDesign Bot
3. Sun-sunshine06

   added 2 commits that reference this issue on Oct 11, 2026

   feat(core): use each model's real context window (#476)

   ...

   856dba8

   feat(core): fit each run into the model's context window (#478)

   ...

   029128d