@nicknisi/pi-spinner

Replaces pi's default working/loading message with a randomly selected phrase on every turn. The list contains ~1000 entries drawn from The Office, Lord of the Rings, Arnold Schwarzenegger / Predator, LinkedIn-influencer satire, gym culture, security-ops jargon, and assorted programming memes. It exists purely to make the wait between turns more entertaining; it changes no agent behavior.

Install

pi install /Users/nicknisi/Developer/pi-extensions/packages/spinner-verbs

What it adds

No slash commands, tools, keybindings, widgets, or custom entry types. It only hooks two events:

• turn_start — picks a random verb and, while the turn runs, repaints it via ctx.ui.setWorkingMessage() on an interval with a Claude Code-style shimmer: a highlight band sweeping left → right across the text. Only the text shimmers — the spinner glyph next to it is untouched.
• turn_end — stops the shimmer timer and calls ctx.ui.setWorkingMessage() with no argument, resetting the working message to pi's default.

Usage

Nothing to invoke. Once installed, every agent turn shows a random message in the spinner, e.g.:

Getting to the Chopper...

A new phrase is sampled independently each turn, so repeats are possible.

Configuration

Optional, via ~/.pi/agent/configs/spinner.json (loaded once at extension load). All keys are optional:

{
  "shimmer": true,
  "shimmerIntervalMs": 80,
  "shimmerPeriodMs": 2000,
  "baseColor": "muted",
  "highlightColor": "text",
  "bandWidth": 6,
  "hideSpinner": false
}

Key	Default	Meaning
shimmer	true	Animate the verb text with a sweeping highlight. Set false for the old static message.
shimmerIntervalMs	80	Milliseconds between shimmer frames.
shimmerPeriodMs	2000	Milliseconds for one full left-to-right sweep.
baseColor	"muted"	Theme colour token or #rrggbb hex for the resting text. muted matches pi's default working-message colour.
highlightColor	"text"	Theme colour token or #rrggbb hex the highlight sweeps toward.
bandWidth	6	Width of the highlight band, in characters.
hideSpinner	false	Hide the spinner glyph entirely (via ctx.ui.setWorkingIndicator({ frames: [] })), leaving only the text.

On themes that don't emit truecolor sequences, the smooth gradient degrades to a two-tone band using the configured theme tokens.

The verb list is a hardcoded VERBS array in index.ts; edit the source to add or remove phrases.

Dependencies

• @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent (peer, *) — uses ExtensionAPI, specifically pi.on for the turn_start / turn_end events and ctx.ui.setWorkingMessage().

No npm dependencies, no workspace dependencies, no build step. The package ships raw TypeScript ("pi.extensions": ["./index.ts"]). The shimmer also uses getAgentDir and ctx.ui.theme from the same peer.

Caveats

• Depends on the turn_start / turn_end event names and the ctx.ui.setWorkingMessage() / ctx.ui.theme APIs, which are pi extension-API surface; a pi release that renames or removes either will break this extension.
• The shimmer repaints the working message every shimmerIntervalMs (default 80ms), the same cadence as pi's built-in spinner animation.
• The selection uses Math.random() with no deduplication, so the same phrase can appear on consecutive turns.
• Because it hooks turn_start without checking event payload, it overrides the working message even in contexts where another extension may have set one; the last setWorkingMessage call wins.