@pi-kaush/pi-tool-call-markers

Give Pi's collapsed tool calls a quiet, width-safe transcript shell while preserving native details under Ctrl+O. The package also includes a display-only thinking-block adapter.

Install

pi install npm:@pi-kaush/pi-tool-call-markers

Restart Pi or run /reload.

What it changes

Collapsed tool rows use semantic theme colors with no gear, background fill, box padding, or filled blank rows:

  % Read
    • src/a.ts                         42 lines
    • src/b.ts                         18 lines

• Two-column outer inset. Tool markers and image output align with an inset conversation surface. Very narrow terminals reduce the decoration before useful content.
• % tool headings. A singleton stays on one line when its summary and outcome fit. A multi-call group has one % heading per contiguous tool type.
• • grouped children. Bullets appear only for members of a multi-call group.
• Semantic, low-contrast status. Tool names are emphasized, summaries and settled metadata are muted, pending state is warning-colored, and failures remain error-colored. Ordinary tool states have no background.
• Width-safe outcome tails. Long summaries truncate before useful tails such as → done, → 42 lines, → +2/-1, or a bash duration.
• Stable running groups. Adjacent calls group as they appear. Pending state and elapsed bash time settle into the final outcome without changing the row count.
• Quiet-turn grouping. Sequential calls can join across an assistant row with no visible prose or thinking. Visible assistant content remains a boundary.
• MCP and self-rendered tools. Their stable call labels, compact arguments, pending state, success, and first error line use the same collapsed shell. Native self-rendered details return when expanded.
• Images remain visible. Image fallback text and terminal image components render below the corresponding marker with the same inset.
• User-run ! bash blocks. Execution display is owned here: user-typed commands trade Pi's green rules for the railed prompt shell (dark surface, status-colored rail) that submitted prompts use.
• Native expansion remains authoritative. Ctrl+O restores Pi's full individual tool rendering, including complete results, custom renderers, and error details.

Subagent plans

A recognized subagent call renders as an unboxed plan in the shared tool aesthetic, marked with ↪ instead of the ordinary % tool marker:

  ↪ subagent chain (3 steps) [repo-review]
    1. 🐝 bee [workhorse] Challenge the compatibility conclusion…
    2. 🐝 bee …

Single calls stay on one ↪ [<emoji>] [<profile>][<agent>] <task preview> row — no tool label; the ↪ marker identifies it. Chain calls get a heading with the kind, count, and scope followed by numbered steps (parallel tasks list without numbers), with each step ordered emoji, profile badge, name badge. Agent display names (emoji + name) are scraped from the native plan component — including the single-call heading — with an args fallback, and render in accent; everything else stays muted, and failed subagents go full red. Subagents never join ordinary tool groups.

While a subagent runs, the plan headline's tail shows live progress from the streamed result details — → 1 turn · provider/model in the warning tone — and a settled call keeps the same → N turns · provider/model summary in muted (turns aggregate across tasks; the model shows only when every task used the same one).

Malformed, ambiguous, future, or too-narrow shapes fall back to the generic ↪ subagent … collapsed row rather than dropping information, and Ctrl+O still exposes the native subagent renderer.

Edit diffs

Settled edit calls keep their change visible without expanding: the call line gains a +added/-removed outcome stat, and the hunk renders as a bounded diff block underneath (+ lines in the added tone, - in the removed tone, context muted, folded regions as ..., capped at 12 lines with a count tail). The full native diff — line numbers, intra-line word highlights — still returns with Ctrl+O.

Files and paths in collapsed rows are preserved as displayed by Pi: hyperlink-wrapped paths (Pi wraps read call paths in OSC 8 hyperlinks) keep their visible text when sanitized for one-line rows.

Scope boundary

This package owns every execution row in the transcript: collapsed tool calls, tool grouping, subagent plans, thinking labels, and user-run ! bash blocks (reshaped into the railed prompt shell). Transcript surface layout — message insets, system-text and status-rule alignment, the editor surface, and the submitted-prompt shell for user messages — belongs to @pi-kaush/pi-content-layout, which never renders tool rows.

One shared visual contract crosses the line: ! blocks align with message text, so their inset mirrors pi-content-layout's message contentInset (see src/bash-block.ts). Change indentation in both packages together.

Hiding info entirely: /toggle-info

The default transcript keeps tool calls and thinking collapsed, and Ctrl+O / Ctrl+T expand them as usual. When you want prose only, /toggle-info hides tool calls (including user-run ! blocks) and thinking completely; running it again restores the collapsed view. The toggle is per-session: every session starts visible.

Bundled thinking-block extension

The second package entrypoint, src/thinking-block-merger.ts, combines only directly adjacent thinking blocks in a display copy. Tool calls, text, provider blocks, signatures, and stored session messages are unchanged.

When Pi exposes its per-row hidden-thinking and streaming fields, hidden reasoning uses these native-themed labels:

⠋ Thinking…  →  ⠙ Thinking…  →  …
+ Thought · 2.5s

The live label samples Pi's native braille spinner sequence from the content updates Pi already renders; it does not add a timer. The adapter stores the first local streaming timestamp per assistant row in a WeakMap. A restored message or an older runtime with no streaming argument uses + Thought. Visible-thinking mode remains native. There is no interval, timeout, render request, model call, or network work.

Local development

pi \
  -e ./extensions/pi-tool-call-markers/src/index.ts \
  -e ./extensions/pi-tool-call-markers/src/thinking-block-merger.ts

Configuration

Grouping calls from the same assistant message is enabled by default. Pi normally executes those calls in parallel. To keep same-message calls as individual compact rows while continuing to group sequential calls across quiet turns:

set -lx PI_TOOL_CALL_MARKERS_COLLAPSE_PARALLEL 0
pi

0, false, no, and off disable parallel grouping. 1, true, yes, and on enable it. The value is read when the extension loads.

Collapsed-row colors

Collapsed rows (tool calls, + Thought, subagents) default to the theme's syntaxComment color — it ships with every Pi theme and reads as a muted tone — with the bolded tool name and the call content sharing it. Failures stay error-colored and live spinners keep their existing tints.

A theme can override each collapsed kind independently with optional color tokens:

{
  "colors": {
    "collapsedToolCall": "#6272a4",
    "collapsedThinkingCall": "#6272a4"
  }
}

Compatibility and fallback policy

Compatible Pi version: @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent and @earendil-works/pi-tui >=0.80.6.

Pi has no public hook for native tool rows, transcript grouping, or per-message hidden-thinking labels. The package therefore uses three small guarded prototype adapters:

• ToolExecutionComponent for collapsed presentation;
• Container for adjacent grouping; and
• AssistantMessageComponent.updateContent for display-only thinking merging and lifecycle labels.

Each adapter feature-detects the fields and methods it needs, keeps the original method, uses an idempotency symbol, catches cosmetic failures, and restores the original on session_shutdown when it still owns the patch. Unsupported shapes fail open to Pi's native rendering. The thinking adapter continues adjacent merging even when the private label shape is unavailable.

Expanded tools always use Pi's native renderer. The collapsed tool shell owns its two-column inset directly; transcript layout extensions should leave tool rows unchanged, preventing load-order-dependent double padding.

TODO: migrate these adapters to public Pi transcript and tool-rendering APIs when available.

Design

• No runtime dependencies.
• No mutation of tool arguments, tool results, provider content, or session messages.
• Group output is cached per row and invalidated on meaningful display transitions.
• No timers or independent render loops.

Development

From the repository root:

npx vitest run extensions/pi-tool-call-markers/test
npm run typecheck
npm run package:check --workspace @pi-kaush/pi-tool-call-markers

Inspect the publish payload:

npm pack --workspace @pi-kaush/pi-tool-call-markers --dry-run

License

MIT