Bump pi-coding-agent to 0.81.0 to resolve brace-expansion DoS alert #288

[wojtekn]

Related issues

• Fixes Dependabot alert #288 (GHSA-3jxr-9vmj-r5cp / CVE-2026-13149)

How AI was used in this PR

Claude Code investigated the alert, determined the only viable remediation path, performed the @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent API migration in the CLI pi runtime, and updated the affected tests. All changes were reviewed by the author.

Proposed Changes

Dependabot alert #288 is a high-severity DoS in brace-expansion (exponential-time brace expansion, CVE-2026-13149), which reaches Studio transitively through @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent.

The fix isn't a plain version bump. Findings while scoping it:

• Every 0.80.x release of pi-coding-agent — including the latest 0.80.10 — bundles the vulnerable brace-expansion@5.0.6 in its shrinkwrap. Only 0.81.0+ ships the patched 5.0.7.
• An npm overrides entry (scoped or global) can't fix it either: pi-coding-agent declares hasShrinkwrap, so npm treats its whole dependency subtree as sealed and parent overrides don't penetrate it (verified empirically).
• pi-coding-agent is declared in three places (apps/cli, apps/studio, packages/common); all must move in lockstep, otherwise the hoisted 0.80.x copy keeps the vulnerable transitive dependency and the alert stays open.

So this bumps all three declarations (plus the pi-* siblings in apps/cli) to 0.81.0, which deduplicates to a single copy carrying patched brace-expansion@5.0.7.

0.81.0 also has breaking API changes. apps/studio and packages/common only import types and are unaffected, but the CLI pi runtime uses the runtime API, so it's migrated: createAgentSession now takes a modelRuntime (a ModelRuntime) instead of the removed authStorage / modelRegistry options. The runtime is built over an in-memory CredentialStore so no auth.json is read or written, preserving the previous in-memory-only behavior. No user-visible behavior change — the AI assistant authenticates and runs exactly as before.

Testing Instructions

• npm run typecheck — passes across all workspaces.
• npm test -- apps/cli/ai/tests/pi-runtime.test.ts — 10/10 pass; the WPCOM Anthropic/OpenAI provider and token-escaping auth-resolution tests were updated to the new modelRuntime API and still assert the same credential resolution.
• npm test -- apps/cli/ai packages/common/ai — 306/306 pass.
• npm run cli:build succeeds; node apps/cli/dist/cli/main.mjs --version runs.
• After merge, confirm Dependabot alert Release 1.0.5-beta1 #288 auto-closes.

Manual smoke test worth doing: run an AI assistant turn against both a WordPress.com (bearer-token proxy) provider and a direct API-key provider to confirm authentication still resolves.

Pre-merge Checklist

• Have you checked for TypeScript, React or other console errors?

[wpmobilebot]

📊 Performance Test Results

Comparing 73d2072 vs trunk

app-size

Metric	trunk	73d2072	Diff	Change
App Size (Mac)	1377.60 MB	1374.75 MB	2.85 MB	🟢 -0.2%

site-editor

Metric	trunk	73d2072	Diff	Change
load	1078 ms	1071 ms	7 ms	⚪ 0.0%

site-startup

Metric	trunk	73d2072	Diff	Change
siteCreation	7013 ms	7028 ms	+15 ms	⚪ 0.0%
siteStartup	2347 ms	2345 ms	2 ms	⚪ 0.0%

---

Results are median values from multiple test runs.

Legend: 🟢 Improvement (faster) | 🔴 Regression (slower) | ⚪ No change (<50ms diff)

[sejas]

Studio Code CLI works as expected. I couldn't test the desktop app as currently is not starting for me. The error doesn't seem related to this PR. I dropped the error I got in #4319 (comment)