Adding Agent Capabilities to ai-backends with Pi

Melvin Vivas · X video post · 2026-08-15 · Open on X

Topics: AI Agents, Tool Use & MCP, LLMOps, Deployment & Monitoring, Portfolio Projects · Level: intermediate

Summary

Melvin added agent capabilities to his open-source ai-backends project using Pi. ai-backends is an API server for common AI use cases. It supports many models and providers, running locally with Ollama or LM Studio or in the cloud via OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic and others.

Key points

• ai-backends is an API server runtime for common AI use cases.
• It supports multiple models and providers.
• It runs locally with Ollama or LM Studio, or in the cloud via OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.
• Agent capabilities were added using Pi (@pidotdev).
• It's open source on GitHub, so you can read the code to see how agents are built in.

Resources mentioned

• AIBackends · repo · aibackends.com · free
  Open-source API server runtime for common AI use cases that supports many models and providers (Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic).
  Also in: Building a production website with Opus 5.5 and TanStack (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), CamelFlow: open-source visual viewer for Apache Camel routes (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), AI Backends: A Production AI Workflow Engineering Site (Link Share) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Demo: Claude Opus 5.5 Generating a Motion-Graphics Video for AIBackends (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 16 more
• Pi · tool · x.com · free
  A customizable coding agent that can be extended through its Extensions API and connected to several model providers.
  Also in: Sign in with ChatGPT: Setting Usage Limits for Each App (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Pi reaches v1.0 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Claude Code mods: customize behavior and UI with plugins (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Customizing Your Coding Setup with Pi Coding Agent Extensions (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 39 more
• Ollama · tool · x.com · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
  Open-source tool for downloading and running LLMs on your own machine with minimal setup.
  Also in: Running LLMs Locally Without an Expensive Rig (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Adding Vercel AI Gateway as a provider in AIBackends with Devin (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Running Qwen3.8-27B Locally on an M5 Max MacBook with Inco Splash (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), AIBackends: An API Layer Between Your App and AI Models (Now with Jev) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 12 more
• LM Studio · tool · x.com · free
  Desktop app for downloading and running LLMs locally, with a developer mode that serves models through an API.
  Also in: Running LLMs Locally Without an Expensive Rig (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Adding Vercel AI Gateway as a provider in AIBackends with Devin (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), LoRA Fine-Tune Qwen3.5-2B on Your Tweets with Unsloth Studio (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), AIBackends: An API Layer Between Your App and AI Models (Now with Jev) (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 31 more
• OpenRouter · tool · openrouter.ai · free
  A single OpenAI-compatible API that routes requests to hundreds of models from many providers, with one bill and model fallbacks.
  Also in: Customizing Your Coding Setup with Pi Coding Agent Extensions (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), The Jev model is now on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Kev-4B model, an alternative to Jev, now available on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Space Bunny Alpha: stealth 1M-context flash model on OpenRouter (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 42 more

Try this

• Clone ai-backends and run it locally with Ollama or LM Studio.
• Build a multi-provider AI API server that has agent endpoints.