pi-claude-style-tools

Claude Code inspired tool rendering for Pi — Shiki-powered diffs, status dots, branch connectors, file icons, and configurable output modes.

Features

• Compact built-in tool rendering for read, bash, grep, find, ls, edit, and write
• Semantic bash display that renders common read-only shell one-liners like nl -ba file | sed -n '1,200p' as Claude Code-style Read file (lines 1-200) rows
• Read-only inspection grouping that collapses consecutive read/grep/find/ls rows into one Claude-style Inspect block, capped to five visible entries by default
• Claude-style OpenAI tool rendering for apply_patch plus common Pi/OpenAI-style tools like webfetch, web_search, fetch_content, task tools, and context tools
• apply_patch diff previews that render parsed file patches in the call phase, similar to edit/write
• Adaptive edit/write diffs with split or unified layouts, syntax highlighting, and inline word-level emphasis
• Diff stat bar with colored add/remove summary and hunk metadata
• Progressive collapsed diff hints that shorten on narrow terminals
• Thinking labels during streaming and final messages, with context sanitization
• Claude-style transcript grammar controls for assistant/thinking prefixes, message spacing, hidden thinking labels, and active working tips
• MCP-aware rendering with hidden, summary, and preview modes
• Configurable output modes for read, search, bash, and MCP results
• Transparent tool backgrounds in transparent or border mode
• Theme-adaptive palette — borders, branch connectors, dim text, spinner accent, and diff backgrounds automatically follow the active pi theme (set themeAdaptive: false to keep the fixed Claude-style palette)
• Transparent edit/write diffs with universal red/green diff colors
• Global border patch for all tool rows, including unknown/custom tools

Configuration

Set in .pi/settings.json or ~/.pi/settings.json:

{
  "toolBackground": "border",
  "readOutputMode": "preview",
  "searchOutputMode": "preview",
  "mcpOutputMode": "preview",
  "previewLines": 8,
  "bashOutputMode": "opencode",
  "bashCollapsedLines": 10,
  "bashStackConsecutive": true,
  "bashSemanticDisplay": true,
  "readOnlyToolGrouping": true,
  "readOnlyToolGroupLimit": 5,
  "diffCollapsedLines": 24,
  "themeAdaptive": true,
  "diffTheme": "github-dark",
  "spinnerColor": "borderAccent",
  "spinnerVerbs": ["Reviewing", "Polishing"],
  "spinnerVerbMode": "append",
  "messageStyle": "claude",
  "assistantPrefix": "●",
  "thinkingPrefix": "✻",
  "messageSpacing": "comfortable",
  "workingTipEnabled": true,
  "workingTipText": "Run /install-github-app to tag @claude right from your GitHub issues and PRs",
  "hiddenThinkingLabel": "Pondering..."
}

Theme integration

When themeAdaptive is true (default), the following colors are derived from the active pi theme on every render and re-derived whenever the theme changes:

Element	Derived from
Tool outline borders (top/bottom rules)	borderMuted
Branch connectors (├─, └─, │)	dim (fallback: muted)
"✻ Worked for Ns" line	muted
Thinking-block italic gray	muted
Diff add/remove accents	toolDiffAdded / toolDiffRemoved
Diff background tints	mixed against toolSuccessBg base
Spinner glyph + verb text (✻ Working…)	borderAccent (fallback: accent)
Spinner status text	muted

User-supplied diffTheme presets and diffColors overrides always win over theme-derived defaults. File-type icons (e.g. ts, py, rs) keep their language-identity colors and are not theme-derived.

Set themeAdaptive: false to keep the original fixed Claude-style palette regardless of the active pi theme.

Toggle at runtime with /cc-theme

/cc-theme           # show current setting + theme name
/cc-theme status    # show current setting + color preview (incl. spinner)
/cc-theme on        # follow pi theme
/cc-theme off       # keep fixed Claude palette
/cc-theme toggle    # flip the current value

The selection is persisted to ~/.pi/settings.json and applied to the next rendered tool row. No restart required.

Repaint the spinner with /cc-spinner

The spinner glyph and verb text (e.g. ✻ Cooking…) share borderAccent by default so the working indicator reads as one unit. The status suffix (e.g. (thinking · ↓ 10 tokens · 2s)) follows muted. Use /cc-spinner to bind either text element to any other theme color key:

/cc-spinner preview                  # list every common theme key with a colored sample
/cc-spinner color <key>              # change glyph + verb color together (e.g. thinkingHigh)
/cc-spinner verb <key>               # alias for color, kept for older muscle memory
/cc-spinner status <key>             # change the status suffix color
/cc-spinner reset                    # restore color defaults (spinner=borderAccent, status=muted)
/cc-spinner verbs list               # show custom spinner verbs and append/replace mode
/cc-spinner verbs add Reviewing      # add a custom verb or phrase
/cc-spinner verbs remove Reviewing   # remove a custom verb or phrase
/cc-spinner verbs mode append        # append custom verbs to the defaults
/cc-spinner verbs mode replace       # use only custom verbs, with safe fallback to defaults
/cc-spinner verbs reset              # remove user custom verbs and mode

Color selections are persisted as spinnerColor / spinnerStatusColor in ~/.pi/settings.json and applied on the next spinner tick. Older spinnerVerbColor settings still work as a backward-compatible alias. Custom verbs are persisted as spinnerVerbs and spinnerVerbMode; they are picked at the next turn start. /cc-spinner verbs ... writes user settings in ~/.pi/settings.json; project-level custom verbs can be set manually in .pi/settings.json. When both project and user spinner settings exist, the spinner reader applies project settings first and user settings second.

Tune assistant/thinking transcript chrome with /cc-message

/cc-message                              # show current message chrome settings
/cc-message style claude                 # screenshot-style transcript rhythm
/cc-message style classic                # older package spacing/prefix behavior
/cc-message spacing comfortable          # keep one blank line between paragraphs
/cc-message spacing compact              # remove blank lines inside assistant/thinking blocks
/cc-message assistant-prefix ●           # set assistant paragraph prefix
/cc-message thinking-prefix ✻            # set visible thinking prefix
/cc-message hidden-thinking-label Pondering...
/cc-message tip on                       # show active working tip line
/cc-message tip off                      # hide active working tip line
/cc-message tip text Run /help for tips   # set active working tip text
/cc-message reset                        # restore message chrome defaults

messageStyle: "claude" trims leading/trailing blank render lines, collapses paragraph gaps, and aligns wrapped assistant/thinking lines under the message body, matching Claude Code's sparse transcript grammar. messageStyle: "classic" keeps the previous package behavior. The active working tip is rendered as a subordinate └─ Tip: line under the spinner when supported by the Pi loader.

Tool background modes

Value	Behavior
default	Standard Pi tool backgrounds
transparent	Transparent tool backgrounds
border	Transparent backgrounds with top/bottom border lines

Output modes

Setting	Values	Default
readOutputMode	hidden, summary, preview	preview
searchOutputMode	hidden, count, preview	preview
mcpOutputMode	hidden, summary, preview	preview
bashOutputMode	opencode, summary, preview	opencode

bashOutputMode behavior:

Value	Behavior
opencode	Compact status while collapsed, with Ctrl+O hint for output preview on raw shell commands. Semantic read-only bash rows omit the repeated hint to stay closer to Claude Code.
summary	Status only; no output preview or expansion hint
preview	Show a small output preview even while collapsed

Boolean settings

Setting	Default	Description
bashStackConsecutive	true	Remove the extra synthetic spacer between adjacent bash tool rows so command bursts render as a tight stack
bashSemanticDisplay	true	Render common read-only shell file-inspection commands as semantic Read rows instead of raw Bash rows
readOnlyToolGrouping	true	Collapse adjacent read-only inspection tools into one Inspect block; mutating write/edit/apply_patch rows stay independent

Numeric settings

Setting	Default	Description
previewLines	8	Lines shown in collapsed preview mode
expandedPreviewMaxLines	4000	Max lines when fully expanded
bashCollapsedLines	10	Lines for collapsed bash output
diffCollapsedLines	24	Diff lines before collapsing
readOnlyToolGroupLimit	5	Max inspection entries shown inside a grouped read-only tool block

Notes

This package targets recent Pi versions where tool renderers use:

• renderCall(args, theme, context)
• renderResult(result, { expanded, isPartial }, theme, context)

Unknown/custom tools do not have a public global renderer hook in Pi, so this package patches container rendering to add top/bottom borders for all tool executions in border mode.

Credits

This project builds upon and was inspired by the excellent work of:

• @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-pretty by huynhgiabuu — Pretty terminal output with syntax-highlighted file reads, colored bash output, and tree-view directory listings
• @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-diff by huynhgiabuu — Shiki-powered terminal diff renderer with word-level diffs in split and unified views
• pi-tool-display by MasuRii — Compact tool call rendering, diff visualization, and output truncation