Tools vanish after delegation? Pi Herdsman ships a Pi 1.5.0 fix

Your coding agent enables a web tool, uses it successfully, then loses it after delegating work. Pi Herdsman 0.38.1 targets exactly that failure. The November 3 patch addresses a tool-selection compatibility problem with Pi 1.5.0, according to the project’s release notes and an acknowledged user report.

Pi Herdsman is a community orchestration layer between the Pi coding harness and Herdr. Pi runs the conversations, Herdr manages terminal sessions and workspaces, and Herdsman coordinates background Agents and their supervising Leads.

Same tools, different order

The reported mismatch was subtle. Pi 1.5.0 preserves the order of tools already active and appends newly activated ones. Herdsman expected the returned selection to match the requested array in the same order. Two lists with identical members could therefore be treated as different, invalidating inherited-tool tracking.

A later reconciliation triggered by delegation could restore the earlier baseline and withdraw tools enabled after startup. The reporter described losing codemode and context-mode tools, then seeing a similar withdrawal of newly enabled web tools in the same session. Those were two observations in one session, not independent clean-session reproductions.

The maintainer confirmed the compatibility issue in the English discussion and said the associated fix preserved the existing inheritance design. Version 0.38.1 compares tool selections by membership rather than position. The release says it continues to enforce explicit allowlists, exclusions and intentional deactivation; it does not activate every registered tool as a workaround.

A targeted update for Pi users

The release’s runtime baseline is Pi 1.5.0, Herdr 0.9.5 and Node.js 22.19.0 or later. Existing Pi users can install or update through pi install npm:pi-herdsman; the setup guide also describes Herdr integration and Linux, macOS and Windows installation paths.

Users bring their own model-provider authentication through Pi. Installing the orchestration package does not include model inference or establish a fixed cost for delegated work. It coordinates agents with their configured tools and permissions, making the inheritance boundary consequential.

AITrending has reviewed the release, setup documentation and public issue, but has not reproduced the runtime failure or tested the patch. The supported news is a specific community compatibility correction, rather than a claim that every tool-availability problem in Pi is resolved.