Feynman

feynman is a research-first CLI built on @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent.

It keeps the useful parts of a coding agent:

file access
shell execution
persistent sessions
skills
custom extensions

But it biases the runtime toward research work:

literature review
paper lookup
source comparison
research memo writing
paper and report drafting
replication planning when relevant

The primary paper backend is @companion-ai/alpha-hub and your alphaXiv account. The rest of the workflow is augmented through a curated .pi/settings.json package stack.

Install

npm install -g @companion-ai/feynman

Then authenticate alphaXiv and start the CLI:

feynman --alpha-login
feynman

For local development:

cd /Users/advaitpaliwal/Companion/Code/feynman
npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm run start

Feynman uses Pi under the hood, but the user-facing entrypoint is feynman, not pi. When you run feynman, it launches the real Pi interactive TUI with Feynman's research extensions, skills, prompts, and package stack preloaded.

Commands

Inside the REPL:

/help shows local commands
/new starts a new persisted session
/exit quits
/lit-review <topic> expands the literature-review prompt template
/replicate <paper or claim> expands the replication prompt template
/reading-list <topic> expands the reading-list prompt template
/research-memo <topic> expands the general research memo prompt template
/compare-sources <topic> expands the source comparison prompt template
/paper-code-audit <item> expands the paper/code audit prompt template
/paper-draft <topic> expands the paper-style writing prompt template
/research-memo <topic> expands the general research memo prompt template

Custom Tools

The starter extension adds:

alpha_search for alphaXiv-backed paper discovery
alpha_get_paper for fetching paper reports or raw text
alpha_ask_paper for targeted paper Q&A
alpha_annotate_paper for persistent local notes
alpha_list_annotations for recall across sessions
alpha_read_code for reading a paper repository

Feynman uses @companion-ai/alpha-hub directly in-process rather than shelling out to the CLI.

Curated Pi Stack

Feynman loads a lean research stack from .pi/settings.json:

pi-subagents for parallel literature gathering and decomposition
pi-docparser for PDFs, Office docs, spreadsheets, and images
pi-web-access for broader web, GitHub, PDF, and media access
pi-markdown-preview for polished Markdown and LaTeX-heavy research writeups
@aliou/pi-processes for long-running experiments and log tails
pi-zotero for citation-library workflows

The default expectation is source-grounded outputs with explicit Sources sections containing direct URLs.

Layout

feynman/
├── extensions/   # Custom research tools
├── papers/       # Polished paper-style drafts and writeups
├── prompts/      # Slash-style prompt templates
├── skills/       # Research workflows
└── src/          # Minimal REPL wrapper around pi-coding-agent

3.2 KiB Raw Blame History