pi-recall

A pi extension that lets the agent search your past AI chat history — across Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, and pi — without you copy-pasting transcripts.

It's a thin wrapper over the recall CLI, which indexes your conversations into a local SQLite FTS5 index. The extension shells out to that binary and exposes the index to the agent as tools.

The agent runs recall to find a past conversation, then reads it back — no copy-paste.

Install

pi install npm:@pratikgajjar/pi-recall

The prebuilt recall binary for your platform ships inside the package, so pi install / pi update keep the extension and the binary in lockstep — no separate go install or brew. The extension resolves the binary in this order: --recall-bin flag -> RECALL_BIN env -> bundled binary -> recall on PATH.

Then build the index once:

recall index        # one-time, ~1 minute on real data
recall doctor       # confirm sources are detected

For local development, load the extension ad-hoc:

pi -e ./packages/pi-recall/src/index.ts

What it does

Nothing an agent has to learn a schema for. On session start it installs the recall skill and refreshes the index; after each agent turn it refreshes again in the background, so the index already reflects the conversation you are having.

It registers no tools. The agent runs the CLI:

recall "connection pool timeout" --limit 5      # search
recall show pi:019f… --range 300:340            # read a slice
recall "pool timeout" --in pi:019f… --context 5 # find and read, one call

A tool schema is re-sent on every single turn whether or not it is used, and it is a second description of flags the CLI already documents — two surfaces to keep in step, drifting apart. The skill is read once, when a task calls for it.

Commands: /recall-health, /recall-index. Flags: --recall-bin, --recall-auto-index.

Every search accepts --repo (. for the current project), --since (e.g. 7d), and --tag (repeatable; AND). A tag may be a user tag or a reserved facet like source:cursor.

Navigating large sessions

Some sessions are huge (thousands of messages). To find a known topic inside one, search it — do not outline it:

recall "connection pool timeout" --in pi:019f… --context 5

That is one call. Measured over real navigations: searching inside a session costs ~400 characters against ~4,000 to outline it, and --context removes the follow-up read entirely. --in . scopes to the current session — how you recover something said before a compaction.

Outline is for a session you know nothing about. recall show takes three flags to slice instead of dumping everything:

• range — Python-style slice over the message list: ":100" first 100, "-50:" last 50, "305:315" window. Negative indices count from the end.
• outline — a table of contents: one line per turn, with runs of tool activity collapsed to [12-38] tool ×27 (4.2k chars: bash×19, read×8). Long sessions degrade to chapter markers (the user's turns) to stay bounded.
• role — comma-separated allowlist: "user,assistant" (skip tool noise), "user" (just the prompts), "tool". Tool-related labels (toolResult, toolCall, function_call, …) all collapse to tool. In long agent loops, ~50% of messages are tool noise; in some, 98% — a 30k-msg session shrinks to ~600 with role="user".

Every rendered message carries its own ## msg N/TOTAL role header so any slice is self-locating. Output is bounded by default and always says how to get the rest: sessions over 200 messages return the outline, a read over ~20k chars stops with a Continue with range='X:Y', and tool results are clipped at 600 chars with an elision marker (tool_chars: 0 to opt out). After a hit at msg_idx=N, range: "N-5:N+5".

Recommended agent prompt

Drop into your project's AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md:

When the user refers to earlier work ("how did we fix…", "continue the…"),
use the recall tools to find and read the relevant past AI session first.

Staying fresh

Because the extension is a long-lived process, it keeps the index warm in the background so searches always reflect your latest conversations — you never pay an index rebuild on the query path:

• On session start it runs an incremental recall index to catch up on anything that changed since your last pi session.
• After each agent turn it debounces a background refresh, so the session you're in right now is searchable moments later.

The incremental index is append-only (it reads just the new lines of changed session files), so each refresh is typically tens of milliseconds. Disable it with --recall-auto-index=false or RECALL_AUTO_INDEX=0 and refresh manually via /recall-index.

Commands

• /recall-health — runs recall doctor (CLI status + detected sources).
• /recall-index — rebuilds the index (recall index; pass --full for a full rebuild).

Configuration

--recall-bin PATH flag / RECALL_BIN env	Path to the recall binary. Default: recall on PATH.
--recall-auto-index=false flag / RECALL_AUTO_INDEX=0 env	Turn off the background index refresh (on by default).

License

MIT.