@esso0428/pi-sidebar

Floating right sidebar for the pi coding harness with model, context, git, and session metadata.

This is an unofficial fork of jrimmer/pi-sidebar published under the @esso0428 npm scope. It includes the following additions over the original:

• Cursor restoration on session shutdown — ensures the terminal hardware cursor is shown (\x1b[?25h) when Pi exits, preventing the disappearing-cursor issue when the sidebar overlay is active.

@esso0428/pi-sidebar renders a non-capturing right sidebar overlay, defaults to a vertically centered floating mode on the right side, and auto-hides while the LLM is working so it does not obscure review of in-progress model output. An optional full-height mode is available for a more fixed-window look.

This fork replaces Pi's overlay API with a terminal-column shim that reserves space on the right side. Pi renders content in the reduced width and the sidebar is painted separately via ANSI escape codes, so there is no text overlap.

Features

• Floating sidebar by default — right-anchored, non-capturing overlay positioned near the visual middle of the screen.
• Optional full-height mode — /sidebar full or PI_SIDEBAR_FULL_HEIGHT=1 renders a fixed right window with a small gutter.
• Cursor restoration on Pi exit — hardware cursor is always restored; no more invisible cursor after leaving Pi.
• Auto-hide while the LLM is working — hides on turn start and reappears when the turn ends. Disable with PI_SIDEBAR_AUTOHIDE_WORKING=0.
• Compact model section — shows model + reasoning level on one line, provider underneath.
• Compact context usage — shows percentage first, then used/available context, e.g. 13% • 1.5k of 200.0k.
• Git branch and diff summary — shows current branch, changed file count, and total +/- stats.
• Per-file git deltas — changed-file rows preserve room for deltas and color additions/deletions separately.
• Truncated git list — changed-file rows are capped so the centered sidebar does not grow too tall; overflow renders as …N more.
• Configurable git detail — toggle longer/reduced changed-file lists with /sidebar-git-detail.
• No footer replacement — leaves pi's native footer alone.
• Responsive visibility — auto-hides below a configurable terminal width.

Example layout:

Model
gpt-5.5 • medium
openai-codex
turns 4
last tool use bash

Context
5% • 49.2k of 1048.6k

Git
main
3 files  +507 -134
M  docs/superpowers/… +506/-130
M  go.mod +1/-2
M  go.sum +0/-2

Location
/path/to/project

/sidebar status

Install

Install globally from npm

pi install npm:@esso0428/pi-sidebar

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/esso0428/pi-sidebar
cd pi-sidebar
pi install ./

Test for one run without installing

pi -e npm:@esso0428/pi-sidebar

Reload an already-running pi after installation:

/reload

Verify installation inside pi:

/sidebar status

Manage the installed package:

pi list
pi update --extensions
pi remove npm:@esso0428/pi-sidebar

Use project-local install only when you want .pi/settings.json in the current project to carry the dependency:

pi install -l npm:@esso0428/pi-sidebar

Commands

• /sidebar — toggle sidebar visibility
• /sidebar on — show sidebar
• /sidebar off — hide sidebar
• /sidebar status — show enabled/layout/autohide/git-detail state
• /sidebar full — use full-height fixed-window sidebar mode
• /sidebar floating — use the default floating overlay window
• /sidebar-refresh — refresh git/status data
• /sidebar-git-detail — toggle longer changed-file list

Shortcut:

• ctrl+shift+s — toggle sidebar

Custom Data Panels (sidebar-ui.json)

The sidebar can display custom data from any pi extension that writes session entries via ctx.sessionManager.appendEntry(). Configure via sidebar-ui.json:

• Global: ~/.pi/agent/sidebar-ui.json
• Local: .pi/sidebar-ui.json (overrides global)

Built-in Skill

This package bundles the pi-sidebar-ui-helper skill, which walks the LLM through discovering available data and generating the correct config. Ask your LLM to help configure sidebar panels, or invoke it manually:

/skill:pi-sidebar-ui-helper

Example — show goal status in the sidebar:

{
  "panels": {
    "goal": {
      "label": "Goal",
      "entryType": "goal-state",
      "variables": {
        "goal.text": "Goal",
        "goal.status": "Status",
        "goal.tokensUsed": "Tokens Used"
      }
    }
  }
}

Environment Configuration

Set environment variables before starting pi:

Variable	Default	Description
PI_SIDEBAR_ENABLED	1	Start enabled. Use 0 to start hidden.
PI_SIDEBAR_WIDTH	34	Sidebar content columns.
PI_SIDEBAR_FULL_HEIGHT	0	Use full-height fixed-window mode instead of floating mode.
PI_SIDEBAR_BUFFER	1	Blank gutter columns before the sidebar border in full-height mode.
PI_SIDEBAR_FILL_ROWS	200	Rows emitted to visually fill tall terminals in full-height mode.
PI_SIDEBAR_MIN_TERM_WIDTH	110	Auto-hide below this terminal width.
PI_SIDEBAR_OFFSET_Y	-6	Floating-mode vertical offset. Negative moves up; 0 uses the TUI's exact right-center anchor.
PI_SIDEBAR_AUTOHIDE_WORKING	1	Hide while the LLM is working.
PI_SIDEBAR_REFRESH_MS	5000	Git polling interval.
PI_SIDEBAR_GIT_LINES	12	Max changed-file rows rendered in detailed mode; overflow shows …N more.
PI_SIDEBAR_MAX_FILES	12	Legacy alias used only when PI_SIDEBAR_GIT_LINES is unset.
PI_SIDEBAR_GIT_DETAIL	1	Start with detailed changed-file list. Reduced mode shows up to 5 rows.

Example:

PI_SIDEBAR_WIDTH=40 PI_SIDEBAR_AUTOHIDE_WORKING=0 pi

Git data

The sidebar uses pi's pi.exec helper to run static git commands in the current working directory:

• git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree
• git branch --show-current
• git diff --shortstat
• git status --porcelain=v1
• git diff --numstat HEAD --

No shell strings are assembled from user input. The sidebar displays file paths and diff counts, not file contents.

Differences from upstream

Cursor restoration on session shutdown

When Pi exits the terminal hardware cursor was left hidden (Pi TUI hides it by default). This fork adds \x1b[?25h (show cursor) in both dispose() and session_shutdown.

No overlay overlap

The original pi-sidebar used Pi's overlay API, which draws on top of terminal content and covers text. @esso0428/pi-sidebar uses a different approach inspired by pi-sidebar-tui:

1. Shrinks terminal.columns — makes Pi think the terminal is ~35 columns narrower, so all content (transcript, input, footer) reflows to the left.
2. Hooks tui.doRender — after every Pi render cycle, paints the sidebar in the reserved right-side columns via direct ANSI escape codes.
3. Synchronized output — uses DECSM/DECRC + synchronized update (\x1b[?2026h/l) for tear-free rendering.

Because Pi never draws in the reserved columns, there is no overlap.

Notes

The terminal-column shim approach (Object.defineProperty(terminal, "columns", ...)) is a workaround that directly modifies Pi's internal terminal object. While functionally effective, it hooks into Pi's internal doRender method. A proper fix would be native Pi TUI window-region support, as described in Future native Pi TUI window regions.

Docs

• Design spec
• Security/performance architecture review
• Future native Pi TUI window regions

Development

npm install --ignore-scripts
npm run verify

npm run verify runs TypeScript checks, unit tests, and npm pack --dry-run to confirm package contents.

Adding a sidebar section

Sections are intentionally lightweight and local to this package. There is no nested Pi-package plugin system.

To add a section:

1. Add a self-contained renderer in extensions/sidebar/sections/<name>.ts.
2. Accept a SidebarSectionContext from extensions/sidebar/types.ts.
3. Register the section in the compositor's buildSidebarContent method.
4. Add or update tests in tests/sidebar.test.ts.

Existing examples: model.ts, context.ts, git.ts, location.ts, and hint.ts.

License

BSD-3-Clause — same as the upstream.