pi-btw

Ask a side question about the conversation you are in, without interrupting the main agent.

/btw what does the retry loop do?

A floating window opens over the transcript with the answer. The main agent keeps working.

Keys

Esc is the only way out: pi's overlay API gives an extension no signal for a click outside its window, so clicking the transcript leaves the window open.

Answers render as markdown, live while they stream.

A finished btw is saved into the session as its own branch, labelled btw, forked where you asked it. So /tree shows it, and navigating there puts you inside that exchange while the main thread kept its own path.

What it does

• One model call per question. The whole conversation goes in as text, with long tool output cut down. No tools, so a btw can never change files.
• Model: your current model, or a picker of your scoped models when you scope more than one.
• Answers come from the conversation first; a little general knowledge is allowed when it helps.
• Past btw's of the current session come from the session tree itself, so the up arrow list and /tree always agree. /new starts an empty list, and a stopped answer (esc before it finishes) is not saved.

Install

pi install npm:@maxpaulus/pi-btw

Or straight from git:

pi install git:github.com/maxpaulus43/pi-btw

Try a checkout without installing:

pi -e ./pi-btw

Develop

npm install
npm test      # history storage tests
npm run check # tsc --noEmit

Release

npx changelogger install   # once per clone, adds the pre-commit hook
npm version patch
git add -A && git commit -m "Release 0.1.1"
git push

The pre-commit hook from @maxpaulus/changelogger writes the CHANGELOG.md entry for the new version. On push, .github/workflows/publish.yml runs the tests and typecheck, publishes to npm with provenance when the version differs from the published one, then tags and creates the GitHub release from that changelog entry.