Initial Review of Pieces OS: My progress tracker
What is Pieces OS?
Pieces (for Developers) is an AI-powered productivity suite that sits beside your IDE, browser, and collaboration apps to capture, enrich, and resurface everything useful you touch while building software. It essentially acts as a personal memory-and-copilot layer that enhances your development workflow.
Core Capabilities
| Feature | Description | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Snippet capture & recall | One-keystroke save of code fragments, terminal commands, images, error messages, even entire web pages; metadata and tags are added automatically | Lets you file away anything the AI just generated so you can reuse it instead of regenerating from scratch |
| Context-aware chat ("Pieces Copilot") | Chat interface that already "knows" what you were reading, writing, or debugging because Pieces continuously observes your active windows (opt-in) | No need to paste big prompts; you can just ask "why isterraform initfailing?" and it reasons over the code/error it saw a moment ago |
| Multi-LLM backend | You can switch between local, open-source, or commercial models | Fits the vibe-coding mindset of quickly trying different models until one feels right |
| Offline & privacy-first mode | Everything is stored locally; cloud sync is optional | Lets you keep sensitive client code out of the cloud while still using AI assistance |
| Cross-tool integrations | Extensions for VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, JupyterLab, browsers, Obsidian, Teams, etc. | Keeps the "flow" unbroken—save a snippet in the browser, reuse it in Cursor a second later |
Integration with AI Code Editors
Pieces + Cursor
Cursor (a VS Code-based AI IDE) already handles conversational code generation and refactoring. Adding Pieces gives you:
- Persistent memory — Cursor's chat forgets old context; Pieces remembers every useful chunk you save and can inject it back into the conversation.
- One-click prompt building — highlight a snippet → "Explain with Pieces Copilot" → the explanation appears inside Cursor chat.
- Library of past vibes — when an experiment works, save it; during the next late-night coding "vibe," search Pieces and paste.
Think of Cursor as the real-time AI pair-programmer and Pieces as the second brain that records and resurfaces the good stuff, so you don't lose flow switching tabs.
Pieces + Windsurf
Pieces is not tied to Cursor; it installs as a desktop service plus an extension that works in any VS Code-compatible IDE, including Windsurf (a VS Code fork). Here's why it works seamlessly:
| Reason | What it means for me |
|---|---|
| Shared extension API | Windsurf re-uses the VS Code extension marketplace. The "Pieces for VS Code" extension installs and runs unmodified inside Windsurf. |
| Desktop companion app ("PiecesOS") | The heavy lifting—context capture, snippet storage, local LLMs—runs in the background app, independent of which editor you open. |
| Live context stream | Because the extension uses the same window-event hooks in Windsurf, Pieces can watch your active files, terminal, and browser tabs and feed that context to Pieces Copilot just as it does in Cursor. |
My Personal Experience
I installed Pieces OS back when it first launched as it was advertised that you could use ChatGPT for free. However, back then there wasn't much else to do, and the overall software felt too blocky for everyday use.
Nowadays, you can see reels telling people Pieces + Windsurf is the ultimate vibe coding tool. I use Windsurf as my main IDE, not Cursor, but I wanted to try it out, as the two tools are usually pretty compatible (both are different forks of the same Visual Studio Code). I was also interested in hooking it up with Obsidian. So I went back and updated it to the latest version.
Setup Challenges
I haven't had time to set up Obsidian with the Pieces plugin yet. I did install "Pieces for VScode", but I usually code remotely using the Remote-SSH plugin, and it seems that Pieces needs to be run on that remote computer, instead of on my MacBook.
So, I haven't really tried Pieces with Windsurf yet. However, I did get to use the updated Pieces on its own.
The Surveillance Factor
The main thing I notice is that Pieces writes down everything I do on my MacBook. It creates these notes every 20 minutes, making a markdown note of things I've done. This forces me to concentrate when I am working, as I do not want notes like "he went on to YouTube", etc.
You can restrict Pieces to not record activities of certain apps: I've restricted it from accessing my messenger apps, my mail, and Chrome. The main things that it records are Windsurf, Terminal, Teams, Xcode, Linear, ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc. You can also make it sleep for a certain amount of time, or turn it off entirely.
Documentation Game-Changer
While the constant monitoring does creep you out, I found it really useful when I had to journal or document everything I did so far. My manager keeps telling me to document my project progress and my experiments. Writing down my progress is a pain, as it takes hours from my work.
However, Pieces really shines at this, because Pieces has GPT 4.1 having access of all my recorded progress. I simply tell it the desired stuff I need and the basic outline, and it generates the content for me, which I can just copy and paste into Confluence. It even maintains the markdown style. It really helps with my workflow and takes hours off my documentation time.
Bottom Line
Pieces is not another autocomplete; it is a context engine that remembers everything you (or the AI) touch and turns it into instantly searchable, LLM-aware knowledge. It plugs the "memory gap" in coding so you can stay in flow longer, reuse wins, and spend less time hunting through tabs or rerunning the same prompts.
Despite some privacy concerns and setup challenges, the time-saving benefits for documentation and the potential for smoother workflow integration make it a tool worth exploring further, especially if you're already using AI-powered development tools.
Future Plans
Looking ahead, I have ambitious plans to enhance my productivity stack even further. I'm envisioning an AI agent that seamlessly integrates Pieces, Obsidian, Linear, and Todoist MCP servers into a unified workflow system.
The Integrated AI Workflow Agent
My concept revolves around leveraging Pieces' automatic activity tracking capabilities as the foundation. Here's how I imagine this system working:
- Automatic progress updates: The AI agent would analyze my work captured by Pieces and automatically update corresponding issues in Linear, eliminating manual status reporting.
- Project documentation: For each project tracked in Linear, the agent would compile daily progress notes from my Pieces activity stream and organize them into structured project journals in Obsidian.
- Task synchronization: As I complete tasks captured by Pieces, the agent would reconcile these with my Todoist MCP servers to maintain an accurate picture of my productivity across platforms.
This integration would essentially create a self-documenting workflow where my actual development activities drive my project management tools, rather than the other way around. The time savings from automated documentation alone would be substantial, but the real value would be in creating a complete, accurate historical record of my work that I can reference and learn from.
While this is still in the conceptual stage, the building blocks are already in place with Pieces' API capabilities. The challenge will be in creating the logic that can intelligently map recorded activities to the right projects and tasks.
