pi-flightdeck

Optional Pi UI support for the flightdeck skill. The Rust app (flightdeck-dashboard) is the canonical full Flightdeck UI; this Pi extension adds inline status near chat and a /flightdeck command that focuses the Rust app or launches it when missing.

The Flightdeck skill and Rust dashboard work without this extension.

Highlights

• Pause banner — yellow frame above the editor when Flightdeck master pauses for the user. Clears on resume, and respects user-hidden widget state.
• Persistent mini-dashboard widget — compact tree of tracked sessions from the current durable active run, with state, kind, harness, last decision, age, and per-pane cost/turns/tokens. Once hidden by the user, state-file ticks and settings events do not reopen it until explicit toggle-in.
• /flightdeck app focus/open — delegates to flightdeck-dashboard focus-or-launch --json, focusing an existing app window or launching it in tmux.
• Owner-scoped by default — dashboard renders only in the Flightdeck owner pane. Child panes remain suppressed. Visibility is configurable. State/archive read errors still render a diagnostic banner so corrupted state is visible even when owner metadata cannot be read.
• Stale-pane guard — rows whose tmux pane id no longer exists render as dim stale rows (no active status/spinner), and standby/watch hints ignore state files whose tracked entries only point at missing panes.
• Optional terminal bell when master pauses.
• Participates in vstack's stable mini-dashboard stack order: Flightdeck → Tasks → Agents → BG tasks.

Read-only by design

The Flightdeck skill owns state mutation; the daemon owns wake delivery; pane-respond owns sending input to inner panes. pi-flightdeck only renders active status from on-disk state and delegates full inspection/control to the Rust app. It reads the durable run-store active pointer first, honoring FLIGHTDECK_RUN_STORE_ROOT from the project .env.local/.env via non-executing parsing of that variable and its referenced variables. Quoted literal values may contain shell-looking punctuation such as command arguments with parentheses; command substitution, unsupported shell directives, non-single-assignment forms, shell escapes, tilde shorthand, or env-mutating constructs fail closed rather than falling back to stale legacy state. It falls back to legacy project-local state/archive files only when no active run exists.

Terminated archives are not shown as active mini-dashboard state. Use the Rust app for active dashboard context and supported archive/session inspection commands; a dedicated History UI is not part of this status-shell extension.

Install

Via vstack:

vstack add vanillagreencom/vstack --pi-extension pi-flightdeck --harness pi -y

Or globally:

vstack add vanillagreencom/vstack --global --pi-extension pi-flightdeck --harness pi -y

Restart Pi after installation.

Commands

Command	Action
/flightdeck	Focus the Rust Flightdeck app, or launch it if missing. Outside tmux, reports a clear blocked error.
/flightdeck:toggle	Cycle the persistent Flightdeck mini-dashboard widget; toggling in restores the last visible mode.

Settings

Open /extensions:settings; settings appear under the Flightdeck Status tab.

Glyph style: each package exposes glyphStyle (unicode default, ascii for terminal-safe chrome). @vanillagreen/pi-tool-renderer.globalGlyphStyleOverride=ascii forces ASCII chrome across vstack Pi extensions while leaving tool/model/user content unchanged.

Dashboard

Setting	What it does
Show dashboard widget	Render the persistent mini-dashboard above the editor. User-hidden state suppresses the whole inline widget until explicit toggle-in.
Dashboard visibility	Where the persistent mini-dashboard may render: owner (default), tmux-session (any pane in the same tmux session), or always. Child panes remain suppressed in all modes.
Dashboard default state	Initial state at session start: hidden, compact, or expanded; settings changes do not reopen a user-hidden widget mid-session.
Dashboard max sessions	Max tracked-session rows shown.
Dashboard stale-after (min)	Suppress the session tree with a one-line hint when the daemon is dead and the last poll is older than N minutes. 0 disables.
Tree connector style	unicode or ascii.

Pause banner

Setting	What it does
Show pause banner	Render the pause-for-user banner unless the inline widget is user-hidden.
Terminal bell on pause	Ring the bell when master first pauses.

Keyboard

Setting	What it does
Dashboard cycle shortcut	Configurable; defaults to f6. Restores the last visible mode when toggled back in. Use none to disable.

Refresh

Setting	What it does
Refresh interval	Poll rate for state files (ms).
Daemon state dir override	Override FD_STATE_DIR resolution. Leave empty for the default.
Master state dir (project-relative)	Legacy fallback directory inside the project root for master state/archive files. Matches FLIGHTDECK_STATE_DIR (default tmp) when no durable active-run pointer exists.

If your project uses a non-default FLIGHTDECK_STATE_DIR or FD_STATE_DIR, set the matching extension setting so the mini-dashboard reads the right files. Daemon tuning env vars are owned by the Flightdeck skill — see its README.

Out of scope

• No full-screen Pi Flightdeck dashboard; use the Rust app.
• No write actions.
• No daemon control.
• No multi-tmux-session aggregation.