Sometimes I resort to using ipdb for debugging a Python script, which has a very nice autocomplete feature.
The problem is, the script usually runs through a shell pipeline that processes its output (for instance python script.py |& tee "stdout.txt").
To me it seems like there is no answer to this (either live without autocomplete, or disable the stdout piping).
My question is made up of two parts: 

Is there any way to have both autocomplete and stdout processing?
If not, exactly why not?
In the end I worked around this by avoiding shell pipes, and writing the output file from Python itself. 
I can watch the file change live using less +F.
I guess I was asking for too much interactivity from L/Unix pipes.
Tab completion in ipdb not working when output is processed