pi-notify-marker

Marker file plugin for Pi coding agent - create files when a Pi run settles.

A plugin for Pi that creates marker files when a Pi run settles. Useful for external monitoring scripts to detect when the agent has finished (e.g. when running Pi in a container where native OS notifications cannot be triggered).

This project is similar to opencode-notify-marker but for Pi coding agent.

Why This Exists

So that you can run Pi in a container, and still have a means of getting OS notifications on the host.

How It Works

When a Pi run settles (no automatic retry, compaction recovery, or queued continuation left), the plugin creates a uniquely named marker file in a configurable directory.

Marker filenames are AGENT_DONE.<unique-suffix>. The unique suffix lets concurrent Pi sessions share a marker directory without clobbering each other's events. Each marker's contents are a plain-text session label — the current Pi session name when set, otherwise the session ID.

The included script ./watch-and-notify.sh watches the marker directory and sends Linux OS notifications (via notify-send) when files are created. It strips the unique suffix from the filename, displays the logical event together with the session label, then deletes the marker.

Supported Events

Event	Pi event	Marker prefix	Meaning
Agent settled	agent_settled	AGENT_DONE	Pi has no retry, compaction recovery, or queued continuation left

One marker is created per settled turn, so a multi-turn run produces one marker per turn.

Installation

From GitHub (Recommended)

pi install git:github.com/arcanemachine/pi-notify-marker

To update to the latest version:

pi update git:github.com/arcanemachine/pi-notify-marker

From npm

pi install npm:@arcanemachine/pi-notify-marker

To update to the latest version:

pi update npm:@arcanemachine/pi-notify-marker

From Local Clone

git clone https://github.com/arcanemachine/pi-notify-marker.git
cd pi-notify-marker
pi install /path/to/pi-notify-marker

No local npm install is required for normal usage.

Usage

If you want desktop notifications when an agent run settles:

1. Start Pi in the container with PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_DIR pointing at a host-mounted directory.
2. Run watch-and-notify.sh from the host with PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_WATCH_DIR pointing at the same directory.

Requirements

• A Pi version that supports the agent_settled event (0.80.10 or later).
• Linux host notification support through notify-send.
• Optional inotifywait for efficient file watching; the watcher falls back to polling when it is absent.
• Optional flock for single-instance protection; without it, two watchers on the same directory can emit duplicate notifications.

Commands

The extension registers three slash commands:

Command	Description
/notify-marker:pause	Suppress completion notifications for this session.
/notify-marker:unpause	Resume completion notifications for this session.
/notify-marker:status	Show the current pause state for this session.

Pause state is per Pi session and persisted in the session itself:

• An explicit pause or unpause survives /reload and /resume.
• New sessions and forks start from the configured default (see PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_PAUSED_BY_DEFAULT).
• Forks that inherit an explicit override reset to the default and persist the reset, so a later reload cannot resurrect the parent's operational preference.

/notify-marker:status reports one of:

• active — explicitly unpaused.
• paused — explicitly paused.
• active (default) — no explicit override; default is active.
• paused (default) — no explicit override; default is paused.

Command feedback is shown via Pi UI notifications (visible in the TUI and over RPC). It is intentionally a no-op in print/JSON modes.

Configuration

The plugin and watcher are configured through the process, shell, or container environment. Pi does not provide a settings-file environment map.

# Custom marker directory (extension side, inside the container)
PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_DIR="/path/to/some/dir" pi

# Same directory, host side, for the watcher
PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_WATCH_DIR="/path/to/some/dir" ./watch-and-notify.sh

Pause by default

PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_PAUSED_BY_DEFAULT controls the state sessions start in when there is no explicit override. Recognized truthy values (case-insensitive, surrounding whitespace trimmed): 1, true, yes, on. Any other value, including unset and empty, means active.

# Default active (default)
pi

# Default paused: each session must be explicitly unpaused before markers are emitted
PI_NOTIFY_MARKER_PAUSED_BY_DEFAULT=1 pi

An explicit /notify-marker:pause always suppresses and an explicit /notify-marker:unpause always emits, regardless of the configured default.

Note: ~ may not be expanded in all environments. Prefer absolute paths. Relative paths and $HOME/... can also work, but make sure Pi and the watcher resolve to the same directory.

Development install (optional)

If you are editing the extension itself, install dev tooling only:

npm install --loglevel=warn
npm test

This package keeps @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent as an optional peer to avoid pulling a large dependency tree during normal installs.

Tests use Node's built-in node:test runner with tsx; no model requests, desktop notifications, or persistent host directories are used.