pi copy-user extension

A tiny pi extension that adds a slash command for copying the most recent user message to your clipboard.

What it does

• Adds /copy-user
• Copies the text from the most recent user message in the current session
• Preserves line breaks between text blocks
• Uses the system clipboard when available and a terminal OSC 52 clipboard escape in interactive TTY sessions
• Avoids synchronous clipboard subprocesses in the /copy-user command path
• Does not fall back to an older message if the latest user message has no text

Install

Install it from npm with pi:

pi install npm:pi-copy-user-message

Or install it directly from GitHub with pi:

pi install https://github.com/fitchmultz/pi-copy-user-message

Then reload pi from inside the app with:

/reload

If you prefer to load it directly from a local checkout during development, you can point pi at the package entrypoint:

pi -e ./extensions/copy-user-message.ts

Compatibility

• Tested with pi 0.72.0
• Minimum Node.js for local repo tooling: >=20.6.0
• .nvmrc pins Node 22 for local development; CI also verifies Node 20.x, 22.x, and 24.x

This package keeps @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent as a development dependency for local typechecking and tests and declares pi core packages as wildcard peers per current pi package guidance; it is intended to run inside pi's bundled extension runtime.

Usage

Once loaded, run:

/copy-user

The command will:

• copy the newest user message text to the clipboard
• show a warning if there are no user messages
• show a warning if the newest user message contains no text

Behavior notes

• Text-only by design: image-only user messages are not copied.
• If a user message contains multiple text blocks, they are joined with newlines.
• OSC 52 is only emitted in interactive TTY sessions, so print/RPC output stays clean.
• Clipboard command fallbacks run asynchronously so the slash-command path does not block the TUI event loop while utilities resolve or time out.
• On Linux-family environments, the extension tries termux-clipboard-set, then wl-copy, then X11 tools (xclip, then xsel).
• If no supported clipboard transport is available, the command reports an error instead of claiming success.
• The command is intentionally strict about “most recent” so it never copies an older user message by mistake.

Development

This repo includes a small regression test in:

• tests/copy-user-message.test.ts

The test covers:

• latest text message
• latest image-only message
• latest whitespace-only message
• no user message at all
• actual /copy-user command success, warning, and error paths
• OSC 52 emission
• Linux clipboard fallback ordering
• X11 xsel fallback after xclip
• macOS pbcopy and Windows clip transport selection
• failed or unsupported clipboard transport cases

Files

• extensions/copy-user-message.ts — publishable extension implementation
• .pi/extensions/copy-user-message.ts — thin project-local wrapper for auto-discovery in this repo
• tests/copy-user-message.test.ts — regression test for message selection, /copy-user command behavior, and clipboard transport fallbacks