session-recap

"While you were away" recap for Pi, modelled on Claude Code's away-summary. When you've genuinely been away from a Pi session, a short recap is drafted while you're gone and parked above the editor so it's waiting when you return.

Built for multi-clauding / multi-pi workflows where several agent sessions run in parallel tabs.

The recap orients rather than reports: it states the high-level task first (what you're building or debugging), then the concrete next step — the last assistant message is already on screen; what you've lost after a context switch is the task thread.

How it triggers

1. Away timer. The extension enables terminal focus reporting (DECSET ?1004) on session start. After the terminal has been continuously blurred for --recap-away-seconds (default 90s), a recap is generated and shown, so it's parked above the editor when you refocus.
2. Turn ends while you're away. If the agent finishes a turn while the terminal is blurred — the prime multi-tab moment — a recap is drafted after a short debounce.
3. Idle fallback. Only on terminals that haven't demonstrated focus-reporting support: --recap-idle-seconds (default 120s) after the last turn_end with no input, a recap is generated anyway. The first real focus event disarms this path for the session.

Also fires automatically on /resume and /fork so you know where the prior session left off.

Clears cleanly on: next user input, new turn start, session reload, or session shutdown.

Quick alt-tabs cost nothing: no model call is made until you've actually been away for the full threshold. If you return while a recap is still drafting, it's allowed to finish — it lands moments after you're back, which is exactly when it helps.

Terminal compatibility

Terminal	Focus reporting	Notes
iTerm2, Ghostty, Alacritty, Kitty, WezTerm, xterm	✅	Works out of the box.
VS Code integrated terminal, Warp	✅	Works.
Apple Terminal	⚠️ Partial	Idle fallback covers it.
tmux	✅ (with config)	Add set -g focus-events on to ~/.tmux.conf, then tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf.

If focus events cause any weirdness in your terminal, run with --recap-disable-focus and the idle fallback still works.

Model

Defaults to the currently active model in your Pi session, but with recap-specific low-cost settings. This piggybacks on whatever auth you already have configured (including custom providers registered via pi.registerProvider), so there are no login surprises. Custom providers are routed through their registered transport when available; providers with neither a registered transport nor a pi-ai compat route are skipped silently — use --recap-model to select a supported provider if you still want recaps in those sessions.

• No tools or Agent Skills are loaded into the recap call — only a compact two-tier transcript is sent (recent activity in detail, plus your earlier prompts and any compaction summary for task framing), capped at ~12k chars.
• Reasoning/thinking is disabled for the recap call.
• Prompt cache writes/reads are disabled with cacheRetention: "none".
• Output is capped with maxTokens: 256.
• No active model, failed auth resolution, or an unroutable custom API handler → the recap is skipped silently.

Override with --recap-model "<provider>/<id>" if you want a specific model regardless of the session's active one. The CLI flag takes priority over the persistent setting below.

Alternatively, configure the model in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json:

{
  "sessionRecap": {
    "model": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6"
  }
}

Use "current" (or omit sessionRecap.model) to follow the active session model. Custom providers registered with pi.registerProvider are supported. The setting is read whenever a recap starts.

Install

Local fork package

Install this vendored package from the monorepo checkout:

pi install /path/to/pi-extensions/packages/pi-session-recap

Or load the source directly without installing it:

{
  "extensions": [
		"/path/to/pi-extensions/packages/pi-session-recap/index.ts"
  ]
}

This package is imported from tmustier/pi-extensions/session-recap with git subtree. The local custom-provider and sessionRecap.model changes are kept on top of the subtree, so upstream updates can be pulled and merged.

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--recap-away-seconds <n>	90	Seconds of continuous terminal blur before an away recap is generated.
--recap-idle-seconds <n>	120	Idle-fallback delay after turn_end, used only when the terminal doesn't report focus.
--recap-disable-focus	false	Disable DECSET ?1004 focus reporting. Idle fallback still runs.
--recap-during-active	false	Allow away recaps while an agent turn is still running, instead of deferring to the end of the turn.
--recap-disable	false	Disable the automatic recap entirely. /recap still works.
--recap-model "<p/id>"	sessionRecap.model, then active model	Override the configured/default model, e.g. anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6.

v0.1's --recap-focus-min-seconds was removed: recaps are no longer drafted on every focus-out, so there is no quick-glance suppression to tune.

Command

Command	Description
/recap	Force-generate a recap right now, bypassing the activity gate.

Behaviour notes

• Uses turn_end, not agent_end, to arm triggers, so a turn that errors or is aborted still gets recapped — and the prompt asks the model to say so explicitly.
• No duplicate drafts: the last-drafted recap prompt is fingerprinted; blur/refocus churn or session metadata-only changes reuse the recap rather than regenerating.
• Defers during active work by default: if a trigger fires while a turn is still loading, the draft waits for the agent to finish, matching Claude Code's away-summary pending behaviour. Use --recap-during-active to allow mid-flight recaps.
• Aborts on new input: any in-flight recap request is cancelled when you start typing or a new turn begins.
• No session persistence: the recap lives only in the widget for the active session — nothing is stored.

Design

See DESIGN.md for the design-of-record, including a comparison with Claude Code's actual away-summary implementation.

License

MIT