@alexleekt/pi-heading

Know where you are at a glance.

One-line session heading widget for the Pi coding agent.

Always know what you're working on — without scrolling back through tool calls and output.

What it looks like

A single line above your editor, updated after every message you send:

Goal locked in — static prefix:

▸ Clean up that old chezmoi checkout

Agent working — animated Braille spinner:

⠋ Clean up that old chezmoi checkout

Turn complete — achievement shown with checkmark:

✓ Removed stale dotfiles and migrated to yadm

No borders. No panels. No ghosting. Just context.

Note: Pi's built-in "Working…" loader is suppressed while the widget spinner is active, so there's only one motion source on screen at a time. Restored between turns.

Features

Feature	What it does
Auto-summarized heading	After every user message, an LLM writes a one-sentence goal
Stable topic	A 2-4 word topic label that doesn't jitter between turns
Per-branch memory	Switch branches and the widget restores that branch's context
Custom prompts	Edit the LLM prompts that generate topics and goals
Model override	Use a cheaper/faster model for summarization
Phase indicators	▸ for goal, ⠋ spinner while agent works, ✓ for achievement
Zero ghosting	Plain text widget — no border fragments to orphan

Installation

pi install @alexleekt/pi-heading

Or symlink for local development:

ln -s ~/git/pi-extensions/packages/pi-heading ~/.pi/agent/extensions/pi-heading

Usage

Automatic (default)

Just send a message. Within 1-3 seconds, the goal line appears. While the agent is generating, it spins. When the turn ends, a checkmark appears with the achievement summary.

help me set up docker for this project
→ ▸ Docker project setup          (goal ready)
→ ⠋ Docker project setup          (agent working)
→ ✓ Docker project setup          (turn complete — completion prefix)
→ ✓ Wrote Dockerfile and .dockerignore  (achievement summarized)

/heading — manual override

Lock in a goal when the auto-summary isn't quite right:

/heading
→ (input dialog) Migrating from Docker to Kubernetes
→ ▸ Migrating from Docker to Kubernetes

/heading-model — change the summarization model

/heading-model
→ Choose heading model
  [anthropic.claude-haiku-4-5]
  [anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5]
  [Reset to session model]

By default, pi-heading uses your session's configured model. You can override to a cheaper one (e.g. Haiku, Flash, Mini) to keep costs near zero.

/heading-debug — toggle debug logging

/heading-debug on     → Enable structured debug logging
/heading-debug off    → Disable debug logging
/heading-debug clear → Wipe the debug log
/heading-debug        → Show last 10 debug entries

When debug is on, every summarization call (topic, goal, achievement) is logged to a temp file with full prompts, raw responses, stream metadata, and any errors. Use this to diagnose missing headings or model failures.

Customizing prompts

The LLM prompts live in:

~/.pi/agent/extensions/pi-heading/prompts/
├── topic.md
├── goal.md
└── achievement.md

Each file has YAML frontmatter with a max_words constraint:

---
max_words: 4
---
Summarize the user's message as a concise topic label.

Output ONLY the topic label — no punctuation, no quotes, no explanation.

Message: {message}

• {message} — the agent's output text (required for all prompts)
• {goal} — the current goal text (available in achievement.md only)
• max_words is read from frontmatter and injected into the prompt; output is truncated if the LLM exceeds it

The achievement prompt receives both {goal} and {message} so the LLM can echo the goal's terminology in its summary.

• Edit these files, then /reload or restart Pi to pick up changes

Default prompts are auto-copied on first run if the files don't exist.

Prompt evaluation (for developers)

If you're iterating on the prompts, use the evaluation CLI to measure quality before shipping.

Evaluate prompts against test cases

cd ~/git/pi-extensions/packages/pi-heading

# Basic 8-case smoke test
bun tools/prompt-eval.ts topic
bun tools/prompt-eval.ts goal

# Comprehensive 50+ case test
bun tools/prompt-eval.ts topic-goal firepass test-cases-comprehensive.json

Reports are written to tools/prompt-eval-report-*.md.

Iterative prompt optimization

Automatically rewrite the prompt until it hits a target pass rate:

bun tools/prompt-eval.ts optimize topic prompts/topic.md \
  "Concise 1-4 word noun phrases, no articles" \
  90 firepass test-cases-comprehensive.json

Arguments:

• optimize — run the optimization loop
• topic|goal — which suite to evaluate
• prompts/*.md — path to the prompt file to mutate
• "desirable outcome" — natural-language description of good output
• 90 — target pass rate percentage
• firepass — model for evaluation (optional, default: firepass)
• test-cases-*.json — test case file (optional)

How it works:

1. Evaluates the current prompt against all test cases
2. Collects failing cases and sends them to a critic LLM
3. Critic rewrites the prompt to fix the failure patterns
4. Prompt file is updated in-place
5. Re-evaluates — repeats until the target pass rate is reached or max iterations (5)

⚠️ Back up your prompt first. The optimizer mutates the file in-place.

Architecture

User message
    ↓
before_agent_start hook (fire-and-forget)
    ↓
Parallel LLM calls:
  • topic prompt (max 4 words)
  • goal prompt  (max 12 words)
    ↓
Topic stability guard (prevents jitter)
    ↓
setWidget("▸ {goal}")        ← goal phase
    ↓
agent_start event
    ↓
setWidget("⠋ {goal}")        ← working phase (animated)
    ↓
turn_end event
    ↓
Achievement LLM call:
  • prompt: {goal} + {message}  ← goal context biases wording
    ↓
setWidget("✓ {achievement}") ← achievement phase
    ↓
appendEntry("heading", { topic, goal, achievement })  ← per-branch persistence

Pi event lifecycle

sequenceDiagram
    participant User
    participant Pi
    participant pi_heading as pi-heading
    participant LLM

    Note over Pi,pi_heading: Session begins
    Pi->>pi_heading: session_start (reason: startup/resume/fork)
    pi_heading->>pi_heading: bootstrapPrompts()
    pi_heading->>pi_heading: replayBranch(ctx)
    alt Has saved heading
        pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("▸ {goal}")
    end

    Note over User,LLM: User sends a message
    User->>Pi: Submit prompt
    Pi->>pi_heading: before_agent_start { prompt, images, systemPrompt }
    pi_heading->>pi_heading: Fire-and-forget summarize()
    Pi->>LLM: Agent loop begins
    LLM-->>Pi: Streaming response
    Pi->>pi_heading: agent_start
    pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("⠋ {goal}")   ← working spinner starts
    Pi->>pi_heading: turn_end
    pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("✓ {goal}")  ← completion prefix
    alt More tool-call turns
        Pi->>pi_heading: turn_start
        pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("⠋ {goal}")  ← spinner restarts
        LLM-->>Pi: Streaming response
        Pi->>pi_heading: turn_end
        pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("✓ {goal}")  ← completion prefix
    end
    Pi->>pi_heading: agent_end

    Note over pi_heading,LLM: Meanwhile (async)
    pi_heading->>LLM: topic prompt → topic
    pi_heading->>LLM: goal prompt → goal
    LLM-->>pi_heading: topic + goal
    pi_heading->>pi_heading: stableTopic(old, new)
    pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("▸ {goal}")    ← goal ready (if before agent_start)
    pi_heading->>Pi: appendEntry("heading", {topic, goal})

    Note over pi_heading,LLM: Achievement summarization (with goal context)
    pi_heading->>LLM: achievement prompt (goal={goal}, output={message})
    LLM-->>pi_heading: achievement (echoes goal terminology)
    pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget("✓ {achievement}")
    pi_heading->>Pi: appendEntry("heading", {topic, goal, achievement})

    Note over User,Pi: User leaves / session ends
    Pi->>pi_heading: session_shutdown (reason: quit/reload)
    pi_heading->>Pi: setWidget(undefined)

Key points:

• session_start — restores heading from previous branch session (▸ or ✓)
• before_agent_start — triggers goal summarization (fire-and-forget)
• agent_start — starts the working spinner (⠋), suppresses Pi's default loader
• turn_start — restarts the spinner between tool-call turns (same agent run)
• turn_end — stops spinner, shows completion prefix (✓), triggers achievement summarization
• agent_end — restores Pi's default loader for the next agent run
• session_shutdown — clears the widget

No ghosting — how?

The original pi-recap (by @Fornace, MIT licensed) used bordered panels with pi-tui components. Border characters would get orphaned in the terminal scrollback when the widget redrew. This version renders a single plain-text line via ctx.ui.setWidget() — no borders, no background colors, no custom components. Differential rendering naturally overwrites it in place.

License

MIT