There are a lot of AI tools to choose from in our current climate of AI. I ended up trying Pieces because I met some of their team members at THAT conference WI. It was free, and I figured why not at least give it a try. To this day, I still use it throughout my workday; however it's far from perfect, and I want to talk about it all: the good, the bad, and my overall thoughts.
What is Pieces
So what even is Pieces? To oversimplify it, Pieces is a Copilot AI tool. But it's more than that. It also lets you choose which LLM model you want to use. So if you're more particular to Claude, you can use it, or if you prefer ChatGPT, you can use that instead.
Offline features
You can also use it offline, giving you access to the many features Pieces currently provides without worrying about the quality of your internet connection.
Because it goes offline, you also never have to worry about any of the information you upload to the prompts being exposed because it's all on the device, unlike using ChatGPT on its own.
Code Snippets
If you want to save code snippets, you can do so by using the browser of your choice and the Pieces browser extension.
There are also code editor extensions like the Visual Code extension to give you access to Pieces while you're coding. This allows users to continue coding while reducing the need to keep going back and forth between coding and ChatGPT, allowing the user to stay focused on their code.
Long-term memory
Pieces also has a feature called Long Term Memory as of writing this blog, where you are able to upload files and folders to it. The files and folders provide the AI LLM model with the proper context to give you a more accurate answer for your prompts by using the content you provided.
What could Pieces improve on?
No product is perfect, and this also applies to Pieces. As of writing this blog, there are a few things I think Pieces as a product could be improved upon. For context, I'm using a Windows OS device.
Pieces OS
Firstly, it's inconvenient having to click on the prompt boxes every time I update the Pieces OS, especially since I have to open up the dropdown menu for both of them if I want to make my selection of network. I should only have to do these prompts once when I download Pieces initially.
Considering that Pieces OS needs to be running in the background for any Pieces features to work properly, I wish there was a hot key to run Pieces OS and disable it as well. I'm not sure if this is actually possible, but it would be very nice to have.
Long-Term Memory
When I want to use the Long Term Memory feature and upload a file or folder to provide context, the pop-up window gets hidden from view and I have to click in the taskbar to continue. This seems to be an issue specifically for Windows users, and this also has been occurring for the Pieces code editor extensions as well.
Snippets
I'll be very honest with you: I don't use the saved snippets feature for Pieces. The biggest reason is that I really like the convenience that Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V provide. There's less friction to copy and paste a code snippet versus opening up Pieces OS, downloading the Pieces browser extension, clicking on the copy code snippet button, and then pasting it.
Copilot
The quality of Pieces Copilot is based on the LLM models you select - Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bison, etc. So I would recommend experimenting around with them since Pieces provides the platform to do so, especially since Pieces is free at the moment.
However, I should add that a lot of the LLM models have been configured to focus primarily on technology-based prompts, so if you're looking to use it for your everyday use, this product may not be for you.
As of writing this article, if you want to edit, delete, or use a prompt as context, you need to scroll all the way to the top in order to do so. This feels like a lot of scrolling as a user, and it discourages me from using any of those features in the first place. Thankfully you're able to copy the prompts by right-clicking on them.
Would I recommend the product?
Honestly, it's hard to say. With the recent hype of AI and the rampant increase of AI tools, it can be hard for me to recommend AI tools. Pieces still have ways to go as a product, but there is definitely potential there.
I would take everything you read in this article into consideration in order to determine if Pieces is the right product for you. If you would like to go deeper into what Pieces offers, I would take a look at their documentation.
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