@pi-archimedes/core

A terminal worth spending your day in — plus the plumbing that keeps the rest of the suite talking.

Core is the face of every session: the animated splash screen on launch, the framed editor where you type, the border spinner that works while the agent works, and clean, labelled thinking blocks. Under the surface it runs the shared event bus through which the other components pass costs, todos, and questions — and the text, colour, and settings utilities they all build on.

Install

Standalone:

pi install npm:@pi-archimedes/core

Or the full suite instead (which includes core and the ten optional components):

pi install npm:pi-archimedes

New to Pi? Pi itself is a one-time global install and needs Node.js ≥ 22.19.0:

npm install -g --ignore-scripts @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent

After installing Pi, choose one installation command above, then cd into your project and run pi. Inside the session, /login signs you into a supported provider and /model picks a model; the full walkthrough, including API-key setup, is in the repo's setup section and Pi's own quickstart. A session that's already running picks up the extension with /reload.

What you get

• Splash screen — an animated greeting when the session launches, in one of nine reveal styles (diagonal, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right, center-out, wave, horizontal, vertical, vertical-up).
• Framed editor — your input in a clean bordered frame, with a double-press guard on the quit key (Ctrl+C by default) so a stray keystroke doesn't end the session.
• Working spinner on the border — one of ten animating styles (pendulum, typing, pulse, marquee, wave-rows, columns, cascade, diagonal-swipe, rain, sparkle) traces the editor frame while the agent works, replacing Pi's native "Working" line. When editorSpinLabel is at its default, the label switches to a random quip per busy episode — re-picked on a subtle random 15–45 s timer while long episodes continue; set a custom value to pin a label (an empty value still hides it).
• Thinking blocks — chain-of-thought output gets a consistent label, colour, and layout; codeUnindent strips the common indentation so code in reasoning reads flush.
• The bus (@pi-archimedes/core/bus) — a global pub/sub event system: COST_UPDATE, ASK_REQUEST, TODOS_UPDATE, TODOS_CLEAR… subagent costs flow to the footer through it, subagent todos to the task board, subagent questions to the ask UI.
• Shared utilities — text truncation and width measurement, colour formatting, settings I/O, and startup profiling.

Settings

Settings live in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json under archimedes.core. The file is strict JSON — no comments or trailing commas (unlike the MCP server config files, which accept both).

Setting	Type	Default	Description
editorSpinBorder	bool	true	Show the animated border spinner while the agent works
editorSpinStyle	string	pendulum	One of the ten spinner styles
editorSpinSpeed	string	normal	slow, normal, or fast
editorSpinLabel	string	Working	Label shown alongside the border spinner; the default is replaced by a random quip per busy episode (re-picked on a subtle random 15–45 s timer while long episodes continue) — set a custom value to pin it (empty still hides it)
animationStyle	string	vertical-up	Splash-screen reveal style (the nine styles above)
labelText	string	Thinking...	Prefix before thinking blocks
labelColor	string	255,215,0	RGB string for the thinking label
codeUnindent	bool	true	Strip common indentation from code blocks in thinking sections
mutedTheme	bool	false	Stored, but not yet effective — the current thinking renderer doesn't consult it, so treat it as a pending toggle

In the suite, /archimedes offers panel controls for the settings that have them; /reload applies any that are read at startup.

Part of the suite

In pi-archimedes, core is always registered — it isn't one of the /plugins toggles — and it underpins what the other components share: the bus that feeds subagent costs to the footer, subagent todos to the task board, and subagent questions to the ask UI, plus the chrome and colour utilities the TUIs use. The diff renderer is standalone and does not depend on core's chrome — it only shares the suite when it loads.

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