Package Stack — Feynman Docs

Feynman is built on the Pi runtime and uses curated Pi packages for its capabilities. Packages are managed through feynman packages commands and configured in ~/.feynman/settings.json.

Feynman also ships a local research extension that registers project-specific tools such as AlphaXiv wrappers, Feynman commands, and read-only Hugging Face Hub inspection. Those extension tools are bundled with Feynman itself rather than installed as separate Pi packages.

This page follows Pi’s upstream docs for packages, extensions, and skills. Feynman adds its own package presets and bundled research extension on top of that model.

Core packages

These are installed by default with every Feynman installation. They provide the foundation for research workflows while still letting Pi own the underlying runtime, RPC transport, provider model, and package loader.

Package	Purpose
`@companion-ai/alpha-hub`	Direct alphaXiv tools for paper and author workflows
`pi-subagents`	Parallel agent spawning for literature gathering and task decomposition. Powers the multi-agent workflows
`pi-docparser`	Parse PDFs, Office documents, spreadsheets, and images for content extraction
`pi-web-access`	Web browsing, GitHub access, PDF fetching, and media retrieval

These packages are updated together when you run feynman update. You do not need to install them individually.

Bundled research extension

Tool group	Purpose
AlphaXiv tools	Search papers, fetch paper reports, ask paper questions, read linked code, and manage annotations
Hugging Face Hub tools	Inspect dataset metadata, features, splits, access status, and small files from model, dataset, and Space repos
Feynman commands	`/help`, `/outputs`, `/init`, `/feynman-model`, `/service-tier`, and discovery helpers

Optional packages

Install on demand with feynman packages install <preset>. These extend Feynman with capabilities that not every user needs.

Package	Preset	Purpose
`@samfp/pi-memory`	`memory`	Pi-managed preference and correction memory across sessions
`@kaiserlich-dev/pi-session-search`	`session-search`	Indexed session recall with summarize and resume UI. Available through Node.js 22.x while its sqlite dependency is native-bound
`pi-generative-ui`	`generative-ui`	Interactive HTML-style widgets for rich output on macOS. The upstream package currently declares macOS-only support

Installing and managing packages

List all available packages and their install status:

feynman packages list

Install a specific optional preset:

feynman packages install generative-ui

On Linux and Windows, generative-ui is hidden from feynman packages list and explicit installs print a platform message instead of attempting an npm install.

Updating packages

Update all installed packages to their latest versions:

feynman update

Update a specific package:

feynman update pi-subagents

Running feynman update without arguments updates everything. Pass a specific package name to update just that one. Updates are safe and preserve your configuration.

This command updates Pi packages inside Feynman’s environment. To upgrade the standalone Feynman app itself, rerun the installer from the Installation guide.