pi-task

Deterministic spec-orchestration for local models — with bundled web, docs, fetch, and worker sub-agent tools.

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What it does

Local models drift. Ask one to plan a non-trivial change and it skips context, hallucinates APIs, and forgets what you actually asked. pi-task fixes this by not trusting a single prompt — it drives your request through a fixed, persisted pipeline of small, verifiable steps (shown above), then hands the main session a clean spec to execute.

Every phase boundary is written to .pi-tasks/TASK_NNNN.md, so a task survives a crash, a restart, or a /task-cancel — pick it back up with /task-resume.

Why it's different

• Deterministic by construction. The phase order is fixed code, not a model's free choice. The orchestrator loops over a config table; each phase has one job and one output section.
• Parallel research, focused output. The research phase fans out to isolated child agents — one indexing project files, others digging into APIs, context, and tooling — and verifies tooling claims before they reach the spec.
• Context stays clean. Noisy file/code spelunking, page fetches, and docs lookups run in throwaway child sessions. The parent only ever sees the distilled answer, never the raw page or the 4k-line file.
• Built for local LLMs. A loop detector and failure classifier catch the stalls, repetitions, and malformed output that smaller models produce, and retry with sharper emphasis instead of giving up.
• Crash-safe. State is a plain Markdown file you can read, diff, and edit by hand.

Install

pi install npm:@mjasnikovs/pi-task

Requires pi (the Earendil coding agent) ≥ 0.78.

Slash commands

Command	What it does
/task <prompt>	Start a new task and run it through the full pipeline.
/task-list	Open the task list in an editor dialog.
/task-resume [id]	Resume the most recent (or named) unfinished task.
/task-cancel	Cancel the running task (soft-terminal — still resumable).
/task-auto <feature>	Plan a feature into a task list and run each title through /task in order (resumable).
/task-auto-resume	Resume the active /task-auto run at the next unfinished task.
/task-auto-cancel	Stop the /task-auto loop after the current task (still resumable).
/remote	Show the QR code & URLs for the always-on web view (/remote stop to stop). Answer grill questions, start tasks, and watch progress from your phone.

The pipeline

Phase	Output section	What happens
refine	refined prompt	Sharpens your raw ask into an unambiguous, self-contained statement.
research	research	Fans out to parallel sub-agents (project files · APIs · domain context · tooling), enriches any referenced packages/URLs/external services with fresh docs, then verifies tooling claims.
grill	grill Q&A	Generates the clarifying questions the spec can't be written without — auto-answered from context where possible, surfaced to you where not.
compose	spec	Assembles refined prompt + research + Q&A into a single implementation spec.
critique	spec	Triages the draft; if it isn't already clean, rewrites it. The triage pass skips the expensive rewrite when the draft already holds up.

The finished spec is delivered to your main pi conversation via sendUserMessage, so you keep working in the same chat — no context handoff, no copy-paste.

Orchestrating multiple tasks — /task-auto

A real feature is usually several tasks, not one. /task-auto is a thin planner on top of the single-task pipeline:

• It only produces titles. All the depth — refine, research, grill, compose, critique — is /task's job, run fresh per title. /task-auto never researches or specs anything itself.
• Clarify first. It asks the few clarifying questions whose answers change how the feature splits, then decomposes the answers into an ordered list of task titles written to .pi-tasks/TASK_AUTO_NNNN.md.
• Sequential, blocking. Each title runs through /task to a spec, the spec is implemented, and the loop waits for that to finish before starting the next title. No overlap.
• Crash- and cancel-safe. Progress is the markdown checkboxes in the AUTO file. /task-auto-resume (no id) automatically picks up the active run at the first unchecked title. If a title's /task run fails, the loop stops and leaves the run resumable.

Remote — drive a task from your phone

The remote server is always on — it starts automatically with each session, with nothing taking up screen space. Run /remote any time to pop a QR code and the connection URLs: a Tailscale line and a LAN line when both are available (the QR encodes the Tailscale-preferred one). Open the URL on any device that can reach the host and you get a live view of the session: streaming output, tool calls, and the /task status block (phase, elapsed, context). It's bidirectional — the browser can:

• Answer grill / /task-auto clarify questions. Each question appears as a card with the recommended default pre-filled (Accept), a free-text box (Submit), Skip, or Cancel task.
• Start and control tasks. Type /task …, /task-auto …, /task-cancel, /task-resume, etc. — they run on the host.
• Send plain messages to the agent.

Prompts use a first-answer-wins race: the same question shows in the local TUI and every connected browser, and whoever answers first wins — the other surfaces dismiss. With nobody connected, /task behaves exactly as before; the remote path is purely additive.

Push notifications

Tap the bell (◯ → ◉) in the remote header to get pushed a notification — even with the app backgrounded or the phone locked — when:

• a grill / clarify question needs answering ("pi needs your input"),
• a task finishes ("Task finished"), or
• the agent hits an error ("Agent error").

Delivery is server → push service → device over the Web Push standard (service worker + VAPID), so it reaches a suspended device. It works on desktop browsers and on iOS home-screen PWAs.

iOS setup (these are Apple's requirements, not ours):

1. Open the HTTPS Tailscale URL (/remote lists it). iOS only allows push from a secure context — the plain http:// LAN URL won't work.
2. Share → Add to Home Screen, then open the app from that icon. iOS only permits notifications for installed PWAs.
3. Launch the app, tap the bell, and Allow when prompted.

The subscription is kept in memory, so after restarting pi just reload the app (it re-subscribes automatically) or tap the bell again. Notifications are suppressed while the app is focused in the foreground — the in-page UI already shows the prompt there.

VAPID keys are generated once and persisted to ${XDG_DATA_HOME:-~/.local/share}/pi-task/vapid.json (deleting them invalidates existing subscriptions). The JWT contact (sub) defaults to the project URL; override it with PI_REMOTE_PUSH_SUBJECT (e.g. your own mailto:you@domain.com). To debug delivery, set PI_REMOTE_PUSH_DEBUG=1 and tail /tmp/pi-task-push.log — it records each push and the push-service HTTP status (201 delivered, 403/400 token/key problem, 410 stale subscription).

/remote stop shuts the server down for the rest of the session (it comes back on the next session start). There is no authentication — it's a personal LAN/Tailscale tool. Don't expose the port to untrusted networks.

Bundled tools

pi-task also registers four MCP-style worker tools (formerly @mjasnikovs/pi-worker). All are parallel-execution-capable, so the parent session can issue several calls in one turn.

pi-worker

Spawns an isolated child pi --print session with read + bash tools. Use it for noisy file/code work that would otherwise flood the main context.

pi-worker-search

Runs a Brave Search query and returns a compact markdown list (title · URL · snippet). Use it to discover candidate URLs before fetching.

Requires BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY (also accepted as BRAVE_API_KEY). Grab a free key at api.search.brave.com/app/keys.

pi-worker-fetch

Fetches a URL, cleans HTML to markdown (Readability + Turndown), then hands it to an isolated child that extracts only the content answering your query. The parent never sees the raw page.

• HTML is cleaned; text formats (plain text, markdown, JSON, XML/feeds, llms.txt, …) pass through verbatim. Binary responses — PDFs, images, octet-streams — return a clear error.
• Bodies over 2 MB are rejected.
• The extraction child runs with --no-tools to mitigate visible-text prompt injection.

pi-worker-docs

Resolves an installed npm package, indexes its .d.ts files and README into a local SQLite cache, retrieves the most relevant chunks for your query, and passes them to an isolated child that extracts the focused answer. Version-pinned to whatever is in your node_modules.

• The package must be installed in the project's node_modules; otherwise a one-time auto-install into a dedicated cache dir is attempted.
• The first call for a (package, version) pair pays a one-time ingestion cost; later calls are FTS-only.
• Cache lives at ${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-~/.cache}/pi-worker/docs.sqlite — delete it to reset.

Configuration

Variable	Used by	Notes
BRAVE_SEARCH_API_KEY / BRAVE_API_KEY	pi-worker-search, research enrichment	Required for web search.
XDG_CACHE_HOME	pi-worker-docs	Overrides the docs cache location (defaults to ~/.cache).
XDG_DATA_HOME	remote push	Where the VAPID keypair is stored (defaults to ~/.local/share).
PI_REMOTE_PUSH_SUBJECT	remote push	VAPID JWT sub contact. Defaults to the project URL; set your own mailto:you@domain.com or https://….
PI_REMOTE_PUSH_DEBUG	remote push	When set (e.g. 1), logs push delivery and push-service HTTP status. Off by default.
PI_REMOTE_PUSH_LOG	remote push	Path for the debug log (defaults to /tmp/pi-task-push.log).

Tasks are persisted to <cwd>/.pi-tasks/TASK_NNNN.md. Add .pi-tasks/ to your .gitignore if you don't want them checked in.

Development

bun install
bun test src/      # 559 tests across 46 files
bun run lint       # prettier + eslint + tsc --noEmit
bun run build      # tsc → dist/

Built with Bun, TypeScript (strict), and TypeBox for tool schemas. Design docs and plans live in docs/.

License

MIT © Edgars Mjasnikovs