Customize

Use customize when a shared recipe is close, but your agent needs different expertise encoded into it: instructions, tools, model profiles, skills, evals, judges, or workflow rules. Customizing creates an editable local copy while preserving the original installed source.

Create an editable copy

recipes customize pi-codex --output ./my-agent

Example output:

Created editable copy for pi-codex

Edit this folder:
  ./my-agent

Then check and run it:
  recipes check ./my-agent
  pi --recipe ./my-agent

What to edit

Start with the files that define the agent recipe: SYSTEM.md for shared recipe-wide instructions, agents/*.yaml for harness profiles, agent variants, and skill selection, plus any skills, evals, judges, or extensions the recipe uses; see Composition. The recipe keeps the same install name, but Pi resolves it to your local copy.

Edit, validate, run

Edit files in the printed folder, then validate and run the customized copy. Local edits are visible to Pi immediately on the next launch.

recipes check ./my-agent
pi --recipe ./my-agent

Share the result

Once the customized recipe is useful, publish it as its own Git-backed recipe so teammates can install the exact same agent system.

recipes publish ./my-agent --github owner/my-recipe --visibility private

Stop using a customized copy

Remove its store registration, then reinstall the original source. The owned ./my-agent directory remains untouched so deleting source is always a separate, explicit decision.

recipes remove pi-codex
recipes install introspection-recipes/pi-codex#0.1.1