session-recap

"While you were away" recap for Pi, modelled on Claude Code's away-summary. When you've genuinely been away from a Pi session, a short recap is drafted while you're gone and parked at the end of the scrollable transcript so it's waiting when you return. In Pi's regular TUI it stays above the editor.

Built for multi-clauding / multi-pi workflows where several agent sessions run in parallel tabs.

The recap orients rather than reports: it states the high-level task first (what you're building or debugging), then the concrete next step — the last assistant message is already on screen; what you've lost after a context switch is the task thread.

How it triggers

1. Away timer. The extension enables terminal focus reporting (DECSET ?1004) on session start. After the terminal has been continuously blurred for --recap-away-seconds (default 90s), a recap is generated and shown, so it's parked above the editor when you refocus.
2. Turn ends while you're away. If the agent finishes a turn while the terminal is blurred — the prime multi-tab moment — a recap is drafted after a short debounce.
3. Idle fallback. Only on terminals that haven't demonstrated focus-reporting support: --recap-idle-seconds (default 120s) after the last turn_end with no input, a recap is generated anyway. The first real focus event disarms this path for the session.

Also fires automatically when you reopen a session with history, so you know where it left off: /resume, /fork, pi -c, pi -r, pi --session <file>, or a terminal restoring its sessions. It is skipped when you reopen with a prompt (pi -c "<prompt>"), because the agent starts work straight away.

The recap disappears when you submit a message or new agent work begins. It is never sent to the model.

Saved recaps

Each recap is saved in the session as a session-recap custom entry with the recap text and the provider/id of the model that drafted it:

{ "type": "custom", "customType": "session-recap", "data": { "text": "…", "model": "openai-codex/gpt-5.6-luna" } }

When you reopen a session, a saved recap that is still current is shown at once, with no model call. It stays current until a message, compaction, branch summary or context edit lands after it; model changes, labels and other metadata do not count. Otherwise a new recap is drafted and saved. This makes restoring many terminal tabs free when nothing has changed, and gives other tools a recent summary of each session to read.

Saved recaps do not appear in the transcript, are hidden in /tree by default, and do not change a session's position in the session picker. A recap drawn while the agent is running (--recap-during-active) is shown but not saved.

Saving a recap preserves the session file's access and modification times, so it does not change which session pi -c reopens.

Quick alt-tabs cost nothing: no model call is made until you've actually been away for the full threshold. If you return while a recap is still drafting, it's allowed to finish — it lands moments after you're back, which is exactly when it helps.

Terminal compatibility

If focus events cause any weirdness in your terminal, run with --recap-disable-focus and the idle fallback still works.

Model

The recap reuses the active provider's authentication and chooses a cheaper model when available:

1. --recap-model when set.
2. anthropic/claude-haiku-5-5 for Anthropic sessions.
3. GPT-6 Luna when the active model is GPT and its provider offers Luna.
4. The currently active model otherwise.

The recap sends no system prompt, no tools and no Agent Skills, and never writes to the prompt cache. Pi saves its system prompt and tools in the session as system messages; the recap leaves those out and sends only the conversation. Reasoning is always off: most APIs disable thinking when no reasoning level is requested, and Codex models are sent an explicit reasoningEffort: "none" because they would otherwise fall back to the server-side default.

It uses a 30-message window from Pi's current projected context, plus the earliest non-omitted user request on the active branch and the latest active compaction or branch summary. Context edits to that request are honoured, including replacement and omission. Large initial requests and tool results retain their beginning and end.

Custom providers work when they use a built-in pi-ai API type. Pi-only custom handlers are skipped because the standalone compatibility layer cannot route them; use --recap-model "<provider>/<id>" to select a supported model.

Install

Pi package manager

pi install git:github.com/tmustier/pi-extensions

Filter to just this extension in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json:

{
  "packages": [
    {
      "source": "git:github.com/tmustier/pi-extensions",
      "extensions": ["session-recap/index.ts"]
    }
  ]
}

Local clone

{
  "extensions": [
    "~/pi-extensions/session-recap/index.ts"
  ]
}

Flags

Command

License

MIT