pi-skill-selector

A pi package for quickly adding and removing skills from the active set.

Disabling a skill moves it out of pi's scanned skills directory into a dot-prefixed sibling folder that pi never scans, so a disabled skill is genuinely removed from the model prompt until re-enabled.

Features

• Interactive picker (/skills) — navigate with ↑/↓ and toggle the highlighted skill with the SPACEBAR
• Multi-scope — manages your global skills, the current project's skills, and npm-package skills
• Scope & status at a glance — every row shows ●/○ (or ✓/✗ for npm), [global] / [project/<name>] / [npm:<package>], and the description
• Live feedback — toggling updates the status on-screen immediately; a summary lists every change
• npm-managed skills — skills shipped inside installed pi packages (e.g. context-mode's ctx-*, loop-police helpers) can also be toggled, via pi's package filtering in settings.json (marked with 📦)
• Genuinely removes disabled skills from the prompt (folder skills parked in a dir pi never scans; npm skills filtered at config level)
• One-time migration of legacy _disabled/ skills so they stop loading

Install

As a pi package:

# From a local path
pi install /path/to/pi-skill-selector

# From git (no build step needed)
pi install git:github.com/jamiefutch/pi-skill-selector

# Once published
pi install npm:@jamiefutch/pi-skill-selector

Then run /reload.

The package ships its TypeScript source — the pi manifest points at extensions/, which pi compiles on load (no dist build required, so git installs work out of the box).

Requirements: the /skills picker is interactive and needs pi's TUI mode.

Usage

/skills

Opens an interactive picker of all skills, across two scopes. The header names the package (pi-skill-selector) so it's clear which tool you're using:

• global → ~/.pi/agent/skills
• project → <cwd>/.pi/skills

Each row shows ●/○ (enabled/disabled), the skill name, its scope ([global] or [project/<name>]), and its description. Move the highlight with ↑/↓ and press SPACE to toggle the highlighted skill — the ●/○ updates live. Press Enter/Esc to close; you'll get a summary of every toggle. Run /reload to apply.

pi-skill-selector — Skills (●=enabled ○=disabled) — 8/28 enabled
 → ● brainstorming   [global]  You MUST use this before any creative work...
   ○ sql-server-table-reconciliation [global]  Compare SQL Server tables...
   ↑/↓ select · SPACE toggle · Enter/Esc close

Pressing SPACE toggles the highlighted skill immediately (the ●/○ flips in-place) but does not require you to exit the list — keep selecting. When you close the picker with Enter/Esc, a summary of all your toggles appears. Run /reload once to apply everything.

pi-skill-selector exposes a single command:

Command	Description
/skills	Interactive enable/disable picker (↑/↓ select · SPACE toggle)

How it works

pi loads skills from two roots (recursively):

• ~/.pi/agent/skills (user)
• <cwd>/.pi/skills (project)

pi skips dot-prefixed entries and node_modules, and honors .gitignore. This package parks inactive skills in a dot-prefixed sibling of each scanned root:

Scope	Active (scanned)	Inactive (never scanned)
global	~/.pi/agent/skills	~/.pi/agent/.skills-inactive
project	<cwd>/.pi/skills	<cwd>/.pi/.skills-inactive

A skill is toggled by moving its folder (SKILL.md dir) between the two, which requires a /reload to take effect (pi caches loaded skills per session).

npm-package skills

Some skills ship inside installed pi packages rather than in a skills folder you own. Those must not be moved or deleted — pi update/reinstall would restore them, and a manual move can corrupt the install. Instead, pi-skill-selector toggles them via pi's package filtering: it rewrites the package's entry in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json with explicit +/- patterns. These are picked up on the next /reload and survive package updates.

npm-managed skills are shown with a 📦 marker and ✓/✗ status:

pi-skill-selector — Skills (●=enabled ○=disabled · 📦=npm) — 8/28 enabled
 → ✓ ctx-search   [📦 npm:context-mode]  Search the context-mode knowledge base...
   ✗ ctx-purge    [📦 npm:context-mode]  Purge the context-mode knowledge base...
   ↑/↓ select · SPACE toggle · Enter/Esc close   📦 = npm-managed (config-filtered)

The /skills header shows ●/○ for folder skills and ✓/✗ for npm-managed ones. Toggling either works the same way with SPACE.

Legacy migration: earlier pi-skill-manager versions parked "disabled" skills in skills/_disabled, which pi actually recurses into (so they were still loaded). On first run this package automatically migrates any _disabled/ skills into .skills-inactive so they're truly disabled.

Why it's reliable

pi discovers skills by walking the two roots above and loading folders that contain a SKILL.md. It skips entries whose name starts with a dot (.) and anything listed in a .gitignore/.ignore.

So an inactive skill parked in a dot-prefixed sibling (~/.pi/agent/.skills-inactive) satisfies both guarantees:

1. It is outside the scanned root, so pi never walks into it, and
2. Even if something pointed pi at it, the leading . makes pi skip it.

That makes disable a real removal from the model prompt — not just a suggestion.

Development

npm install
npm run typecheck   # tsc --noEmit
npm test            # vitest run

Package details

• Type: ESM ("type": "module")
• Extensions: extensions/pi-skill-selector.ts (declared via the pi manifest)
• Core dependencies (peer): @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent (*), @earendil-works/pi-tui (*)
• Tests: vitest — exercise listing, enable/disable (global + project), legacy migration, scope labels, and the space-bar selector, using an isolated temp agent root (PI_AGENT_ROOT)

License

MIT