pi-local

A Pi extension for configuring and switching between multiple local LLM inference engine connections.

Features

• Multiple connections — configure several local inference servers (LM Studio, oMLX, llama.cpp, etc.) and switch between them
• Auto-detection — queries connected endpoints for available models with rich metadata (size, context window, type)
• Model loading — load/unload models on servers that support it (oMLX, LM Studio)
• Persistence — your default provider and model are restored automatically on Pi restart
• macOS keychain — offers to store API keys in the macOS keychain via security commands
• Reasoning support — discovers and passes through reasoning capabilities from models that advertise them

Supported backends

Backend	Detection	Load/Unload
oMLX	/v1/models/status + /api/status	Yes
LM Studio	/api/v1/models	Yes
OpenAI-compatible	/v1/models	No

The extension tries oMLX first, then LM Studio, then falls back to OpenAI-compatible.

Commands

/local-login

Add or remove connections. Each connection is identified by its base URL.

Manage Connections
> Remove: http://127.0.0.1:1234
  Add new connection
  Done

On macOS, if you enter a direct API key, you have the option to store it in the keychain. The key is then referenced via a !security command.

/local-model

Select a connection and model. Shows server stats (for oMLX), model size, context window, and model type.

Installation

You can either install this directly with the pi command via npm:

pi install npm:@monroewilliams/pi-local

or check out this repository and add the extension to your Pi configuration in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json (useful if you want to modify it to better suit your purposes):

{
  "extensions": [
    "/path/to/pi-local"
  ]
}

Then reload Pi (/reload) and run /local-login to add your first connection.

API key formats

The API key field accepts all Pi auth key formats:

Format	Example	Description
Direct key	sk-1234567890abcdef	Stored as-is
Environment variable	$MY_API_KEY or ${MY_API_KEY}	Resolved via resolveConfigValue
Shell command	!security find-generic-password -s 'pi-local' -a 'http://...' -w	Shell execution, stdout used
Empty	(leave blank)	No authentication

On macOS, direct keys are optionally stored on the keychain.

Storage

• Connections — stored in ~/.pi/agent/auth.json keyed by base URL
• Default provider/model — stored in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json (defaultProvider / defaultModel)
• Model metadata — cached alongside the connection in auth.json (contextWindow, maxTokens, reasoning)

Development

npm install
npm run typecheck    # TypeScript check
npm run check        # Biome + TypeScript + tests
npm run format       # Auto-format

License

MIT