Pi Skill Toggle

I have a confession to make. I'm a skill hoarder. We moved from MCP servers polluting our context to now the irresistible urge to gather and hoard skills that then do the same once you gather enough of them. The problem is I'm afraid to remove them and forget that they exist or where to find them in my system, and it's a pain to re-enable them when needed for a specific use case. So I created this project inspired by Pi Skill Palette that lets me enable and disable all the 'SKILLs' I have without them disappearing from my visual memory, but still maintaining control over what gets pumped into my context.

Full credit to nicobailon for pi-skill-palette which was the foundation of this. I just pointed my clanker at that project and basically said "make that project but have it toggle skills instead."

Install

pi install npm:@dibin946/pi-skill-toggle

Or from git:

pi install git:github.com/dibin666/pi-skill-toggle

Restart pi to load the extension. For a local checkout, run:

pi -e ./index.ts

The current implementation targets Pi's @earendil-works API (Pi 0.84+).

Usage

/skills-toggle

/skills is also available as a short alias.

This opens an interactive overlay where you can:

• Navigate with ↑/↓ arrows
• Filter by typing
• Enter/Space - Toggle between enabled ↔ hidden
• d - Toggle full disable (enabled ↔ disabled)
• Ctrl+S - Save changes
• Esc - Cancel

How It Works

The extension asks Pi's own DefaultPackageManager to resolve the complete skill catalog, including global/project settings, .agents/skills, local paths, packages, and currently loaded extension skills. It writes through Pi's SettingsManager, so global and project settings stay separate and writes use Pi's settings locking.

For ordinary local skills, disabled entries use Pi's built-in -path resource filter. For example:

{
  "skills": [
    "-skills/brainstorming",
    "-skills/cloud-compute"
  ]
}

Package skills are filtered in the package's skills selection when necessary. Missing packages are never installed just by opening the toggle UI.

Disabled skills:

• Won't appear in the system prompt
• Won't load their frontmatter into context
• Are still visible in the toggle UI

Disable Modes

Hidden (Default Toggle)

Use hidden when you still want to call the skill manually via /skill:name but don't want day-to-day context pollution. The model won't auto-invoke it, keeping your system prompt lean, but you retain access when needed.

Examples: Specialized debugging skills, infrequently-used cloud tools, niche domain skills you call explicitly.

Hidden mode sets disable-model-invocation: true in the skill's SKILL.md frontmatter.

Fully Disabled

Use fully disabled when you want to clean up your slash command menu so less-used skills don't overwhelm your UI/UX. The skill won't appear anywhere—not in the system prompt, not in /skill: completions.

Examples: Deprecated skills, skills from packages you rarely use, duplicates you'll never need.

Disabled mode adds -path entries to settings.json (pi's built-in mechanism).

Visual Indicators

Icon	Meaning
● (green)	Enabled - skill active in context
◐ (yellow)	Hidden - manual only via /skill:name
○ (red)	Disabled - completely off
* (yellow)	Pending change (not yet saved)
²	Skill has multiple sources (duplicates)

Theming

Create theme.json in the extension directory to customize colors. Copy theme.example.json as a starting point:

{
  "border": "2",
  "title": "2",
  "enabled": "32",
  "hidden": "33",
  "disabled": "31",
  "selected": "36",
  "selectedText": "36",
  "searchIcon": "2",
  "placeholder": "2;3",
  "description": "2",
  "hint": "2",
  "changed": "33",
  "duplicate": "35"
}

Values are ANSI SGR codes (e.g., "36" for cyan, "2;3" for dim+italic).

Skill locations

The extension uses Pi's current resource resolver rather than a hard-coded list. It follows the same precedence and filtering as Pi itself, including:

• global and project .pi/skills/
• global and ancestor .agents/skills/
• skills configured in settings or Pi packages
• skills contributed by loaded extensions

This keeps the toggle list aligned with the Pi version in use.

License

MIT