@nicknisi/pi-save-md

Save the most recent assistant response in the current session to a Markdown file in the working directory. It exists because pi has no built-in way to export a single response to a file — the full session transcript lives in pi's session storage, but extracting just the latest answer as a standalone .md requires digging through that store. This extension adds one slash command, /save-md, that does it in place.

What it adds

• Slash command: /save-md <name>

No tools, keybindings, widgets, overlays, event hooks, or custom message/entry types.

Usage

/save-md notes
/save-md notes.md
/save-md research/api-comparison

Behavior:

1. Waits for the agent to be idle (ctx.waitForIdle()), so invoking it while a response is streaming waits for the response to finish.
2. Walks the current session branch backwards (ctx.sessionManager.getBranch()) to find the latest assistant message.
3. Extracts only text content blocks from that message, joining them with blank lines. Non-text blocks (tool calls, thinking, images) are dropped.
4. Appends .md if the name doesn't already end in it, resolves the path relative to ctx.cwd, and writes the file.
5. Ensures the file ends with a trailing newline.

Examples:

/save-md summary        → writes <cwd>/summary.md
/save-md docs/plan      → writes <cwd>/docs/plan.md (docs/ must already exist)

Failure modes, all reported via ctx.ui.notify:

Condition	Level	Message
No assistant message in the current branch	warning	No assistant response to save
Empty <name> argument	warning	Usage: /save-md name
Latest assistant message has no text blocks	warning	The latest assistant response has no Markdown text
Target file already exists	error	File already exists: <path>

Configuration

None. No config files are read, no options exist, and no environment variables are consulted.

Dependencies

Peer dependencies (both *):

• @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent — ExtensionAPI type. At runtime uses pi.registerCommand, ctx.waitForIdle, ctx.sessionManager.getBranch, ctx.ui.notify, and ctx.cwd.
• @earendil-works/pi-ai — AssistantMessage type only.

Runtime dependencies: Node builtins node:fs/promises (writeFile) and node:path (resolve). No npm dependencies, no workspace deps.

Caveats

• Only text blocks are saved. Tool calls, tool results, thinking blocks, and any other non-text content in the assistant message are silently omitted. If the last assistant turn was purely tool calls with no final text, the command reports there is nothing to save.
• Current branch only. getBranch() returns the active branch of the session tree; messages on other branches are not considered.
• No overwrite. The file is written with flag wx (exclusive create). Re-running /save-md with the same name fails with an EEXIST error rather than overwriting. Delete the file or pick a new name.
• No directory creation. Parent directories of the target path must already exist; otherwise writeFile throws (the error propagates rather than being notified).
• Pi internals. Depends on the session entry shape (entry.type === "message", entry.message.role) and on ctx.sessionManager.getBranch() / ctx.ui.notify APIs, any of which could change across pi versions. The content-block filter is written defensively (structural checks, no casts) to tolerate shape drift in message content.

Install

pi install /Users/nicknisi/Developer/pi-extensions/packages/save-md