pi_side

A Pi extension for side conversations without losing your place in the main task.

Ask questions, explore alternatives, and bring useful answers back as editable drafts without interrupting your workflow. Side conversations keep their own history and use your existing model and provider settings.

Open /side, ask a question, and keep chatting in a separate terminal panel. The panel starts with a text snapshot of the current conversation. Its questions and answers stay out of the main model's context until you choose to bring an answer back.

Install

Install directly from GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/uzunkonak/pi_side

Pin the first release with pi install git:github.com/uzunkonak/pi_side@v0.1.0.

Or install from npm:

pi install npm:@uzunkonak/pi_side

Try locally

From this repository:

pi -e ./extensions/side.ts

Or install this checkout as a local Pi package:

pi install /absolute/path/to/pi_side

Start a new Pi session or use /reload after installation. Tested with Pi 0.84.4 and Node.js 22.19+. Host packages use wildcard peer ranges as required by Pi's package conventions; newer Pi versions have not yet been verified.

Use

/side                       Open or resume this branch's side conversation
/side Why this approach?     Ask a question and open the panel
/side new                    Start over with a fresh snapshot of the main chat
/side new Compare options    Start over and ask a question
/side share                  Add the last question and answer to the main editor
/side ask new                Ask the literal question “new”
/side help                   Show the controls

Inside the panel:

Key	Action
Enter	Send a question or follow-up
Page Up / Page Down	Scroll the conversation
Esc or Ctrl+C while waiting	Cancel only the side request; keep the question for retry
Esc or Ctrl+C while idle	Close the panel; keep completed exchanges
Ctrl+S	Close and add the last exchange to the main editor

Sharing creates an editable draft and preserves any text already in the main editor. It does not submit the draft or start a main-agent turn.

Behavior

• Uses the model selected when the panel opens and Pi's existing provider/auth configuration. No separate API key is needed. Side requests consume that provider's normal usage allowance.
• The context snapshot respects Pi compaction. It remains fixed while the side conversation continues; /side new refreshes it. Only text from the conversation is copied, not image data or the main system prompt.
• The side model can discuss the snapshot but has no tools: it cannot read new files, edit code, or run commands.
• Completed exchanges are saved as custom session entries, outside the main model context. Closing, reopening, and resuming a saved session preserves them. Navigating the session tree restores the side history belonging to that branch. A new side conversation supersedes the earlier one on that branch without deleting its older records.
• Persistence follows Pi's session behavior: --no-session is ephemeral, and a brand-new main session is not written to disk until its first main assistant message. Side metadata is stored in the same session file, not a separate private or encrypted store.
• Cancelling, closing, or switching sessions aborts the side request. Late responses are discarded. Provider failures appear in the panel; the question stays available for retry.
• The panel uses Pi's custom overlay API and requires interactive TUI mode. Print, JSON, and RPC modes are not supported.

The snapshot keeps up to 32,000 characters of the most recent context and labels truncated snapshots. Side exchanges plus the next question have a 64,000-character limit; start a new side conversation when full. Replies are capped at 4,096 output tokens. These are character budgets, not exact token estimates, so a model with a small context window may reach its own limit earlier. Responses appear when complete.

pi_retry can be installed alongside this extension. Side requests use the model registry directly rather than the main agent loop, so pi_retry's main-agent wait/resume handlers do not retry side requests.

Development

npm install
npm run check       # TypeScript + state, isolation, lifecycle and panel tests
npm run test:e2e    # Real Pi terminal smoke test; Python 3 and a Unix PTY required
npm pack --dry-run

The terminal test uses an in-process fake provider and isolated temporary Pi configuration. It exercises opening, follow-ups, reopening, and sharing without network calls or real credentials. Its terminal transcript is written to output/terminal-smoke.log.

Publishing

The package name is @uzunkonak/pi_side. Keep package.json, CHANGELOG.md, and the Git release tag (v0.1.0 for version 0.1.0) aligned. GitHub topics describe the repository; npm's latest dist-tag selects the stable package version. The pi-package npm keyword is required for discovery in the Pi package gallery.

From the clean release checkout, after verifying the npm account has access to the @uzunkonak scope:

npm run check
npm run test:e2e
npm publish --dry-run
npm publish --access public --tag latest
npm view @uzunkonak/pi_side version dist-tags keywords

prepublishOnly runs the typecheck and tests before publishing. Only extensions, src, the README, changelog, license, and package manifest are included in the npm package.

License

MIT © Caner Uzunkonak