I just set up an exe.dev virtual machine.
It took me about twenty minutes from start to finish to get Pi running on the VM with the same extensions I use on my MacBook. The only exception was a fun-to-have Pi emote that shows a little graphical avatar.
Cute, but not exactly load-bearing.
The setup
I use mise-en-place, usually just mise, to handle my setup and dependencies.
So the first thing I did was install mise. From there, I copied my mise.toml over, got the tools installed, authenticated with the GitHub CLI, set my GitHub email and username, and then did the same with jj.
After that I started Pi and authenticated with Codex.
That was basically it.
The one thing I changed
I noticed that the provider was going through exe.dev’s Shelley provider.
It is very well intentioned. They give you free credits, so I cannot complain. I may play around with it for smaller tasks later on. But for now I already have my setup, so I disabled that extension.
Actually, I asked Codex through Pi how I could disable the extension and whether it was safe to do so. I trust the answer enough to try it because, well, it is a VM. That is kind of the point. It is supposed to be somewhat throwaway.
Pi config made that really easy.
And because it is throwaway I don’t feel like I need to babysit the model while it works. Sure I was still following along, even if just to see what the model was doing in the new environment, but I didn’t feel like I would break my system if I did.
The point
The whole point is that it was really, really easy.
Like, really easy.
I was a little hesitant to hit the purchase button on the twenty-dollar-a-month plan. But I think that was more a failure of my own imagination than anything else.
Very quickly after I set up SSH from my laptop, then my phone, so now I have an always-on agent for whatever side projects I dream up. It’s awesome.