pi-carryover

English | 简体中文

Cross-session work carryover for the pi coding agent — quit today, and tomorrow's fresh pi already knows exactly what's unfinished and what's next.

Every project gets a <cwd>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md holding only unfinished work (TODOs, key decisions, blockers, next steps — completed items are always dropped). It's injected into the system prompt at every session start, per project directory.

v1.1 — Topic compaction: pi's built-in compaction only fires when the context is about to overflow (volume-driven, arbitrary cut point). pi-carryover watches every input and, when your new question drifts from the recent topic, suggests — or performs, opt-in — compacting at that natural boundary, and archives every compaction summary under .pi/topics/ for later recall. See Topic compaction.

v1.1.2 — Semantic detection: lexical coverage misjudged Chinese paraphrases (same-topic rewording scored 0 overlap); detection now runs on tiny local embedding models, language-routed (bge-small-zh 23MB + MiniLM 23MB, ~2ms/message, fully offline after download, auto hf-mirror.com fallback for CN networks). Benchmarked 28/28 on Chinese & English same/diff-topic pairs. v1.1.3: enabled by default (installs = full features; models download silently in background on first use, disable via /carryover embed off) and bilingual UI (prompts follow your input language).

Install

Install via npm (recommended):

pi install npm:pi-carryover

Or install directly from GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/Feng-H/pi-carryover

Zero config. Works immediately in every project.

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How is this different from pi's built-in /handoff and pi -c?

Three different tools for three different jobs — they complement, not compete:

	pi built-in pi -c / /resume	pi official /handoff example	pi-carryover (this)
What it does	Replays the full history of the last (or picked) session	Generates a one-shot kickoff prompt for a new task from current context	Maintains a living project state note across sessions
Trigger	Manual — you must remember -c or pick a session	Manual — you run /handoff <goal> mid-session when starting something new	Automatic — saves on quit, injects on every start. /carryover save for manual
Persistence	Session JSONL files (machine format)	None — the generated prompt is a draft in your editor, not saved	<cwd>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md — human-readable, hand-editable, git-committable
Scope	One conversation line	One task transfer	The whole project (per-cwd, accumulates across many sessions)
Session linkage	is the data	Loses the old session	Records last session path (.pi/.carryover-session); the agent tells you when /resume would help
Token cost per start	Full history replay (can be huge)	One LLM generation per use	~300–600 tokens, flat

Mental model:

• pi -c / /resume = the database — nothing is ever lost, but you must know where to look, and replaying costs full context.
• /handoff = the courier — "I'm switching to a new task right now; package what matters into one prompt."
• pi-carryover = the sticky note on the whiteboard — always current, always visible at the next standup, for any session you start.

They compose well: work across many sessions with carryover keeping state; /handoff when pivoting to a fresh task; /resume (the path is recorded for you) when details matter.

When you need it (and when you don't)

Strong fit:

• Multi-day projects — "pick up where I left off" without re-explaining or hunting sessions
• Many parallel projects — each directory self-describes its own state on open
• Frequent pi restarts (new terminals, reboots, mid-task interruptions)
• Team workflows — commit .pi/CARRYOVER.md and teammates' agents inherit the project state
• Cheap/free/rotating model setups where long -c replays are wasteful or unreliable

Weak fit (skip it):

• One-shot throwaway sessions (pi --no-session)
• Single linear session you always continue with pi -c
• Strictly private scratch work you never want on disk

Token cost — honest numbers

Cost item	When	Approx. size
Inject notes + maintenance instructions into system prompt	Every LLM call	~400–600 tokens (notes ≤300 words + fixed ~150-token instruction block)
save_carryover tool schema (promptSnippet + guidelines)	Every LLM call (tool listing)	~80 tokens, flat
Agent writing notes via save_carryover	At milestones / TODO changes (few times per session)	The note itself (~300–500 tokens), inside the ongoing conversation
Exit LLM summary (tier 2)	Once, on quit	One standalone call; input ≈ full conversation text, output ≤300 words. 30s timeout, silently skipped on failure
Raw fallback (tier 3)	Only when tier 2 fails	Zero LLM cost — pure file I/O

Notes on the recurring cost:

• Caching works in your favor. The injected block sits at a stable position in the prompt, so with provider prompt caching (most providers), repeat calls hit cache; the ~500 tokens only truly bill once per session (and once more after each note update invalidates it).
• Versus the alternative: a pi -c replay of a long session routinely costs tens of thousands of context tokens per call; carryover is a flat few hundred.
• Zero at exit is survivable by design: if tokens are exhausted at quit time (exactly when it matters), tier 3 grabs raw recent turns to disk without calling any LLM — the next session still gets a usable state.

How it works

Three-tier reliability — never bet everything on "LLM available at exit time":

Tier	When	LLM needed?	Reliability
1. Agent-maintained notes	During work, via the save_carryover tool	Uses your working tokens	🌟 Primary — nearly lossless
2. LLM exit summary	On quit, ≤300-word incremental summary	yes	Best effort (30s timeout)
3. Raw fallback	On quit when LLM unavailable / out of tokens	no	💯 100% guaranteed

Session linkage — on every save, the current session file path is recorded to .pi/.carryover-session; on startup it's injected alongside the notes, so the agent can point you to /resume when full-history detail is needed. pi's sessions are the data layer; this extension is the state layer.

Topic compaction (v1.1) — semantic detection (v1.1.2)

pi's built-in compaction is volume-driven: it fires only when the context is about to overflow, cutting at an arbitrary point mid-work. This extension adds semantic timing: it detects when your new question is unrelated to the recent topic and suggests (or performs, opt-in) compaction at that natural boundary — the best possible moment, with the best possible instructions.

• Embedding-based detection (v1.1.2) — each message is embedded by a tiny local model and compared (cosine similarity against a rolling window of recent messages). v1.1's pure lexical coverage metric systematically misjudged Chinese paraphrases (same-topic rewording scored 0 overlap); semantic similarity fixes that: benchmarked 28/28 correct across Chinese & English same/diff-topic pairs.
• Language-routed dual models — CJK-dominant messages route to bge-small-zh-v1.5 (23MB), latin-dominant to all-MiniLM-L6-v2 (23MB). Each language gets a model actually trained for it; total download 46MB, inference ~2ms/message on CPU, fully offline after download. (A single multilingual model tested worse on both languages and was rejected.)
• Enabled by default (v1.1.3) — installing the extension means full features: nothing downloads at install time, but on first use the models download silently in the background (progress in the status bar, one notification with an opt-out hint). Disable anytime via /carryover embed off or settings.json.
• Resilient downloader — HF endpoint is auto-probed (official → hf-mirror.com for CN networks); files download with HTTP Range resume (curl -C - equivalent, 5 retries) because HF CDN connections do drop on flaky networks. transformers.js's own fetcher has no resume — this downloader bypasses it; the runtime never touches the network.
• Graceful degradation — models unavailable (no network / skipped)? Lexical detection remains as fallback, but pure-CJK messages skip it (measured 100% false positives); latin-technical chats keep full coverage.
• Guardrails — context floor (minTokens, default 40k), turn cooldown (default 3), short messages & mid-stream interrupts skipped, failures never touch the input pipeline.
• suggest mode (default) — notifies with similarity score + token count; you decide whether to /compact.
• auto mode (opt-in) — an LLM yes/no double-confirm gates the irreversible compaction; only confirmed topic shifts trigger ctx.compact() with instructions to fully preserve the old topic's conclusions/decisions/file state.
• Compaction = carryover — every compaction summary is archived to <project>/.pi/topics/, capped at 50.

// ~/.pi/agent/settings.json
"carryover": {
  "topicCompact": {
    "mode": "suggest",    // "off" | "suggest" | "auto"
    "minTokens": 40000,
    "cooldownTurns": 3,
    "archive": true,
    "embed": {                       // v1.1.2 semantic detection
      "choice": "auto",             // "auto" (default) | "zh" | "en" | "off"
      "thresholdZh": 0.40,          // optional overrides (bench defaults)
      "thresholdEn": 0.115,
      "endpoint": ""                // optional download source override
    }
  }
}

Commands & files

Command	Description
/carryover	View notes (truncated preview + last session path)
/carryover save	Manually generate an LLM summary now
/carryover clear	Clear the notes
/carryover topics	List topic compaction archives
/carryover embed	Semantic detection status / on|auto|zh|en|off|reset

<project>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md        # the notes (markdown, human-editable, git-committable)
<project>/.pi/.carryover-session  # last session file path (for /resume linkage)
<project>/.pi/topics/             # topic compaction archives (v1.1, capped at 50)

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中文说明

pi coding agent 的跨会话工作承接扩展 —— 今天退出，明天全新启动的 pi 已经知道还有什么没干完、下一步是什么。

每个项目目录维护一份 <cwd>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md,只保留未完成的工作(待办、关键决策、卡点、下一步 —— 已完成的事项永远会被删掉)。每次会话启动自动注入 system prompt,按项目目录隔离。

v1.1 新增 —— 话题压缩：pi 内建 compaction 只在上下文快溢出时才触发(体积驱动、切点随机)。pi-carryover 监听每条输入，当新问题与近期话题无关时，在这个自然边界提示(或选开自动)压缩旧话题上下文，并把每次压缩摘要归档到 .pi/topics/ 随时可召回。详见话题压缩。

v1.1.2 —— 语义检测：词法覆盖率对中文同义改写系统性误判(同话题换个措辞覆盖率就是 0)，改用本地小模型 Embedding 语义相似度检测，按语言路由双小模型(中文 bge-small-zh + 英文 MiniLM 各 23MB，约 2ms/条，下载后完全离线；国内网络自动切 hf-mirror.com)。中英文 28 组样本实测全部判对。v1.1.3:默认启用(装了扩展即全功能，首次使用时后台静默下载，/carryover embed off 可关闭)+ 提示文案跟随输入语言(中/英双语)。

安装方式

通过 npm 官方镜像 安装（推荐）：

pi install npm:pi-carryover

或者直接从 GitHub 安装：

pi install git:github.com/Feng-H/pi-carryover

• npm 官方包页面：https://www.npmjs.com/package/pi-carryover

零配置,装完即用,对所有项目目录生效。

与官方 /handoff、pi -c 的区别

三者是三件不同的事,互补而非竞争:

	pi 自带 pi -c / /resume	官方 /handoff 示例	pi-carryover(本扩展)
做什么	回放最后(或选定)会话的完整历史	从当前上下文一次性生成新任务的启动 prompt	跨会话维护项目状态笔记
触发	手动 —— 你得记得 -c 或去挑会话	手动 —— 会话中切新任务时 /handoff <goal>	全自动 —— 退出时保存、每次启动注入;也可 /carryover save 手动
持久化	会话 JSONL(机器格式)	无 —— 生成的 prompt 是编辑器草稿,不落盘	<cwd>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md —— 人可读、可手改、可进 git
范围	一条对话线	一次任务转移	整个项目(按目录,跨多个会话累积)
会话联动	本身就是数据	丢失旧会话	记录最近会话路径(.pi/.carryover-session),需要时 agent 会告诉你用 /resume
每次启动 token 成本	完整历史回放(可能巨大)	每次使用一次 LLM 生成	~300-600 tokens,恒定

心智模型:

• pi -c / /resume = 数据库 —— 什么都不丢,但你得知道去哪找,回放要付完整上下文的钱;
• /handoff = 快递员 —— "我现在要切新任务,把要紧的东西打包成一个 prompt";
• pi-carryover = 白板上的便签 —— 永远最新,任何一次开工都能看到。

三者可以组合:平时用 carryover 维持项目状态;切新任务用 /handoff;需要历史细节时用 /resume(路径已替你记好)。

适用场景

强烈匹配:

• 多天项目 —— "接着上次干"不用重新交代、不用翻会话
• 多项目并行 —— 每个目录打开即自述状态
• 频繁重启 pi(新终端、重启、中途打断)
• 团队协作 —— 把 .pi/CARRYOVER.md 提交进 git,队友的 agent 自动继承项目状态
• 廉价/免费/轮换模型 —— 长会话 -c 回放又贵又不可靠时

弱匹配(可以不装):

• 一次性临时会话(pi --no-session)
• 永远单会话线性工作、总是 pi -c 续开
• 绝不想落盘的隐私工作

Token 消耗 —— 诚实数字

成本项	时机	大小
注入笔记 + 维护指令到 system prompt	每次 LLM 调用	400-600 tokens(笔记≤300字 + 固定150 token 指令块)
save_carryover 工具 schema	每次 LLM 调用(工具列表)	~80 tokens,恒定
agent 通过 save_carryover 写笔记	里程碑/待办变化时(每会话几次)	笔记本身(~300-500 tokens),在会话内完成
退出 LLM 摘要(第2层)	退出时一次	独立调用一次;输入≈会话全文,输出≤300字;30s 超时静默跳过
降级抓取(第3层)	仅第2层失败时	零 LLM 成本 —— 纯文件读写

关于经常性成本的说明:

• Prompt caching 帮你省钱:注入块位置稳定,多数 provider 的 prompt 缓存会命中;~500 tokens 每会话真正计费约一次(笔记更新后失效一次,随后又稳定)。
• 对比基线:长会话 pi -c 回放动辄每次调用几万上下文 token;carryover 是恒定几百。
• 退出时零 token 也可存活:退出那一刻 token 正好用完(最坏时机)时,第3层不调任何 LLM 直接抓最近对话落盘 —— 下次会话照样有可用状态。

工作原理

三层保障 —— 绝不把宝押在"退出时 LLM 可用"上:

层	时机	需要 LLM?	可靠性
1. agent 主动维护笔记	干活中,通过 save_carryover 工具	用干活时的 token	🌟 主力 —— 几乎不丢
2. 退出 LLM 摘要	退出时,≤300字增量摘要	是	尽力而为(30s 超时)
3. 原始抓取兜底	退出时 LLM 不可用/token 用完	否	💯 100% 保证

会话联动 —— 每次保存都把当前会话文件路径记到 .pi/.carryover-session;启动时与笔记一起注入,agent 需要完整历史细节时会指引你用 /resume。pi 自带会话是数据层,本扩展是状态层。

话题压缩 (v1.1) —— 语义检测 (v1.1.2)

pi 内建的压缩是体积驱动的:只在上下文快溢出时才触发,切点落在干活的任意位置。本扩展补上语义时机:检测新问题与近期话题无关时,在这个自然边界提示(或选择自动)压缩 —— 最佳时机、最佳指令。

• Embedding 语义检测 (v1.1.2) —— 每条消息用本地小模型向量化,与近期消息窗口算余弦相似度。v1.1 的纯词法覆盖率对中文同义改写系统性误判(同话题措辞一换覆盖率就是 0),语义相似度彻底解决:中英文同/异话题 28 组样本全部判对。
• 按语言路由双小模型 —— 中文为主的消息走 bge-small-zh-v1.5(23MB),英文为主走 all-MiniLM-L6-v2(23MB)。各用各的最优模型,总下载 46MB,CPU 推理约 2ms/条,下载后完全离线。(实测单一多语言模型两种语言都更差,弃用。)
• 懒引导 —— 安装时不下载任何东西。首次真正需要检测时弹交互选择(双模型/仅中文/仅英文/跳过),选择持久化,下载进度显示在状态栏。
• 抗断下载器 —— 下载源自动探测(官方 → 国内自动切 hf-mirror.com);文件用 HTTP Range 断点续传(curl -C - 等效,重试 5 次),HF CDN 在不稳网络下断连也不怕;绕开 transformers.js 自带的无续传 fetch,运行时零联网。
• 优雅降级 —— 模型不可用(断网/选择跳过)时回落词法检测,但纯中文消息不再信任词法(实测误判率 100%),拉丁词技术对话保持可用。
• 护栏 —— 上下文下限(minTokens 默认 40k)、轮数冷却(默认 3)、短消息与流式打断跳过;任何失败不影响输入链路。
• suggest 模式(默认) —— 提示相似度 + token 数,由你决定是否 /compact。
• auto 模式(选开) —— LLM yes/no 二次确认后才执行不可逆的压缩,指令要求完整保留旧话题的结论/决策/文件状态。
• 压缩即沉淀 —— 每次压缩摘要都归档到 <项目>/.pi/topics/,上限 50 份。

// ~/.pi/agent/settings.json
"carryover": {
  "topicCompact": {
    "mode": "suggest",    // "off" | "suggest" | "auto"
    "minTokens": 40000,
    "cooldownTurns": 3,
    "archive": true,
    "embed": {                       // v1.1.2 语义检测
      "choice": "auto",             // "auto"(默认) | "zh" | "en" | "off"
      "thresholdZh": 0.40,          // 可选阈值覆盖(默认为基准实测值)
      "thresholdEn": 0.115,
      "endpoint": ""                // 可选下载源覆盖
    }
  }
}

命令与文件

命令	说明
/carryover	查看笔记(截断预览 + 最近会话路径)
/carryover save	立即手动生成 LLM 摘要
/carryover clear	清空笔记
/carryover topics	查看话题压缩归档
/carryover embed	语义检测状态 / on|auto|zh|en|off|reset

<project>/.pi/CARRYOVER.md        # 笔记(markdown,人可读可改,可进 git)
<project>/.pi/.carryover-session  # 最近会话文件路径(供 /resume 联动)
<project>/.pi/topics/             # 话题压缩归档(v1.1,上限 50 份)

License

MIT