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pi update

By Arch Brooks on July 29, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

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That's actually good news. You only have one pi on your PATH:

/home/archman/.local/bin/pi

The problem is simply that npm is no longer configured to manage it.

Since pi is just a symlink into a Node package, the cleanest solution is to replace it with a standard npm-managed installation.

Option 1 (recommended): Replace the existing installation

First remove the old installation:

rm ~/.local/bin/pi
rm -rf ~/.local/lib64/node_modules/@earendil-works

Then install it using npm with the same prefix:

npm install --prefix ~/.local -g @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

Verify:

pi --version

Option 2: Make npm permanently use `~/.local`

If you prefer all user-installed Node packages to live under your home directory:

npm config set prefix ~/.local

Then reinstall:

npm install -g @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

Before we do either, I'd like to confirm one thing

Please run:

npm config list

I'm looking for whether your /usr prefix comes from:

an .npmrc setting,
an environment variable,
or Gentoo's default configuration.

Once I see that, I can tell you the cleanest long-term setup. My goal is to leave you with a pi installation that updates normally with npm instead of having to work around mismatched install locations every time.

Where it's installed is fine. I just wanna update the damn thing.

Fair enough. Since you want to keep it exactly where it is, update that installation directly.

Run:

npm install -g \
  --prefix ~/.local \
  @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

Then verify:

pi --version

If that still leaves you at 0.80.6, force the reinstall:

npm install -g \
  --prefix ~/.local \
  --force \
  @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

If it still doesn't update, bypass npm's package cache:

npm install -g \
  --prefix ~/.local \
  --force \
  --cache /tmp/npm-cache \
  @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

If none of those work, run this one command:

npm view @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent version

That tells us whether npm can actually see a newer version. If it reports 0.80.10 (or newer) but pi --version stays at 0.80.6, then something in the package itself is preventing the update rather than your installation. In that case, paste the output of the install command and I'll pinpoint the issue.

$ pi --version 0.80.10 ✔ archman@gentoo

Perfect—that confirms the update worked.

You're now running:

pi 0.80.10

So in the future, since your installation lives under ~/.local, you can update it with:

npm install -g --prefix ~/.local @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

or, if you ever need to force an update:

npm install -g --prefix ~/.local --force @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent@latest

No need to move the installation or reinstall from scratch.

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