@nklisch/pi-fff-compat

Exposes the fast FFF file index through Pi-native find/grep semantics. Upstream @ff-labs/pi-fff is excellent for fuzzy/smart discovery, but its ffind/ffgrep behavior intentionally differs from Pi's built-ins; this package provides the conservative compatibility surface: glob-only file lookup and exact regex/literal grep, no fuzzy fallback — backed by the same real-time FFF index.

pi install npm:@nklisch/pi-fff-compat

Modes

Mode	Tools	How
Default (additive)	fast_find, fast_grep alongside the built-ins	install and go
Override	registers as find/grep themselves	PI_FFF_COMPAT_OVERRIDE=1
Disabled	nothing	PI_FFF_COMPAT_DISABLE=1

Commands

• /fff-compat — index health, indexed file count, watcher/scan status.
• /fff-compat-rescan — trigger a manual rescan.

Watcher & inotify budget

FFF maintains a real-time native watcher with one watch per indexed file. Scanning very large trees (e.g. a home directory) can exhaust fs.inotify.max_user_watches and leave the index silently stale on unwatched files. Two independent knobs:

• PI_FFF_COMPAT_HOME_SCAN=1 — opt into home-dir scanning (default off; raise fs.inotify.max_user_watches when enabling).
• PI_FFF_COMPAT_DISABLE_WATCH=1 — scan once, no live watcher (index goes stale until rescan).

The index itself, frecency, and git-aware filtering come from @ff-labs/fff-node, loaded as a normal dependency.