outpost_pi
Tutorial · 1 of 4

Getting started

By the end of this guide you'll have Outpost-Pi running on one machine, your phone paired to it, and your first command sent from the app — the agent runs it and the result streams back to your pocket. Plan on about five minutes.

Before you start

You need two things:

  • A machine with Pi (the coding agent) and Node 20+ installed.
  • The Outpost-Pi app on your phone — currently available as an Android APK direct download. Operator-owned iOS distribution and the Google Play listing are not available yet.

No Pi yet? The No Pi yet tab below runs a one-command curl installer that sets up Pi, the plugin, and the supervisor for you. Already have Pi? Use the Already have Pi path.

1. Install the plugin

Outpost-Pi is a Pi plugin. Add it, run the setup wizard, then show a pairing QR:

bash — one command
$
curl -fsSL https://outpost-pi.kevoun.com/install.sh | bash

Installs Pi, the Outpost-Pi plugin, and the always-on supervisor, then prints the pairing step. No sudo — everything lands in your home directory.

Walking through the three commands:

pi install npm:outpost-pi

Installs the plugin into Pi. This registers the /outpost-pi slash command and deploys the agent-network skill that teaches the LLM the mesh tools.

/outpost-pi

The first run opens a short wizard that creates the config for this folder. It asks two questions:

  1. Agent name — how other peers address this agent. Defaults to the folder name.
  2. Use the relay? — answer Yes so this terminal auto-starts the relay on future runs.

The wizard sets your preferences, but Outpost-Pi has no built-in relay URL — you must point it at one before the relay can connect. Configure it with:

In Pi — text
/outpost-pi set-relay https://your-relay.example

Then run /outpost-pi to join the local mesh and connect the relay. (If you skip the URL,/outpost-pi joins the local mesh only and warns that the relay is unconfigured.)

/outpost-pi pair

Prints a QR code (and a copy-paste pairing URI). Leave it on screen for the next step. Pairing is per machine: once a phone is paired, every Pi agent on this machine accepts it.

Order matters
Run /outpost-pi before /outpost-pi pair. On a brand-new folder with no config, pair will tell you to run the wizard first — that's the config step doing its job.

2. Pair your phone

With the QR on screen:

  1. Open the Outpost-Pi app on your phone.
  2. Tap Pair a device (or the scan button) and point the camera at the QR.
  3. The app confirms the pairing and the agent shows up in your device list. The Pi terminal footer flips to 🟢 relay and shows 📱 <shortid> while the phone is connected.

Pairing authenticates the two sides to each other with Ed25519, and all relay traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS).

3. Send your first command

You're now driving the agent from your phone. In the app's chat for this agent, type a prompt and send it:

From the app — text
List the files in this folder and tell me what this project is.

The prompt lands in the Pi session on your machine exactly as if you had typed it there. The agent runs, and its response streams back to your phone live. That round trip — phone to agent and back — is the whole point of Outpost-Pi.

Beyond chatting, the app can drive the session with a few typed actions: compact context, new session, set model, and set thinking level. The model picker reads live from the host, so it always reflects what that machine can actually run.

Where to go next

That's one agent, one phone. From here you can let multiple agents talk to each other, reach across machines, or keep an agent running when you walk away:

  • Local mesh — two agents on the same machine discovering and messaging each other.
  • Daemon mode — promote a folder to a 24/7 background agent.