Why I built PiChamber

I ran Pi in a terminal and liked it. It stayed small, it stayed fast, and it stayed out of my way. But my sessions lived on whatever machine I started them on. If I walked away from my desk, my agents walked away with me.

The inspiration came from OpenChamber, a desktop and browser shell for agents that proved the model I wanted. Your workspace on every screen, your sessions reachable from anywhere. The base is Pi itself. Its sessions, providers, and extensions do the real work. PiChamber is the workspace I built around them so I could reach that work from anywhere.

Your sessions, anywhere

The core idea is simple. Pi runs on a machine you control, a desktop, a homelab box, a VPS, and you reach it from any screen you own. pichamber serve walks through setup. Pairing is a one-time link, fastest through a QR code. On your home network, LAN covers it. Away from home, relay is the fallback. Trust needs an off switch, so revoking a device kills its live sessions in about 15 seconds.

Steer live work

Remote means nothing if you can only watch. From any paired screen you see reasoning and tool streams as they happen. You steer the session or stop it. You fork when an idea branches, archive when it is done, and resume weeks later where you left off.

Pi stays Pi

This mattered most to me. PiChamber adds the workspace without touching what makes Pi good. Providers pass straight through, more than 40 of them, plus your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google keys. Extensions follow Pi's own model. PiChamber renders their cards, buttons, forms, and sandboxed views instead of inventing a second plugin system for you to learn. The split is strict. Pi owns sessions, providers, and extensions. PiChamber owns auth, connections, shells, and live output.

Every screen

Desktop apps on macOS, Windows, and Linux. A web server you host yourself. Mobile apps on the same transport. One session, every screen, the same live view. You install PiChamber and it runs. No sidecar to babysit.

If you take one thing from this post, take the bet. Agents are most useful when they keep working after you close the laptop. PiChamber exists so yours can, on machines you control, through software you can read. The repo is at RyderAsKing/PiChamber. Run agent work. Keep control. Ship from anywhere.

Try it

Enough story. The fastest way to understand the bet is to run it.