pi-cursor-style

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Change how the pi input box cursor looks — color, shape, or both.

pi draws its own cursor as a black-and-white block (a "reverse video" block) and offers no setting to change it. This extension fixes that:

Works out of the box with a blue cursor. No config file needed to start.

Install

pi install git:github.com/Feudalman/pi-cursor-style

Restart pi afterwards. Your cursor is now a blue block.

Alternative install methods:

pi install npm:pi-cursor-style        # once published to npm

Or manually: copy extensions/cursor-style.ts into ~/.pi/agent/extensions/.

Everyday use

Everything is one command: /cursor-style. Changes apply immediately — no restart, no reload — and are saved automatically.

See what's active:

/cursor-style

Control the terminal caret directly (overrides the style-is-the-switch behavior):

/cursor-style hardware off     force-disable pi's showHardwareCursor
/cursor-style hardware on      force-enable it (and let the extension manage it again)

Change the shape:

/cursor-style bar
/cursor-style underline
/cursor-style block
/cursor-style hardware

Change the color:

/cursor-style color #ff5f00        any hex color
/cursor-style color 208            an xterm 256-color index
/cursor-style color theme:accent   follow your theme's accent color (tracks theme switches)
/cursor-style color none           no color; use the terminal's default

Omitting the color entirely falls back to the built-in default #00aaff (blue).

Behavior notes per style:

• block — covers the character like the default, but filled with your color. The character stays readable (drawn in the inverted color).
• bar — inserted between characters, so nothing is hidden and nothing shifts on other lines. On a completely full line (rare) it momentarily falls back to the default block to avoid breaking alignment.
• underline — draws an underline under the character. At the end of a line it shows ▁ instead, because most terminals don't underline blank cells.
• hardware — see the next section; this one works differently.

The hardware style (VS Code-like caret)

All software-drawn cursors must occupy a character cell — that's a terminal limitation. The hardware style bypasses it: it hides pi's drawn cursor completely and lets your terminal's own caret (pixel-rendered, cell-free) take over. Characters never move or get covered.

To use it:

/cursor-style hardware

The style is the switch — no dialogs: switching to hardware turns pi's showHardwareCursor on (written to ~/.pi/agent/settings.json, applied immediately, no restart); switching to any other style turns it back off, so the terminal caret never stacks on top of a software cursor. If you need showHardwareCursor on permanently for other reasons (e.g. IME positioning), use /cursor-style hardware on and leave the style alone.

Two things to know:

1. Shape and color come from your terminal's cursor settings, not from this extension. For the VS Code beam look, set your terminal's cursor to a vertical bar:
   • VS Code / Cursor terminal: "terminal.integrated.cursorStyle": "line"
   • iTerm2: Preferences → Profiles → Text → Cursor → Vertical bar
   • Kitty: cursor_shape line
   • Ghostty: cursor-style = bar
2. /cursor-style color ... has no effect in this mode — terminals don't allow apps to recolor the hardware caret.

Configuring by file (optional)

Prefer editing a file, or managing config via dotfiles? The command writes to ~/.pi/agent/cursor-style.json, which you can also edit directly:

{
	"style": "bar",          // block | bar | underline | hardware
	"color": "#00aaff"       // "#rrggbb" | 0-255 | "theme:<token>" | omit for default blue
}

File edits take effect after /reload or a restart (the command path applies instantly).

Limitations

• Restyles the main input box only. The small search inputs inside /model, /resume, etc. are built into pi's core and cannot be restyled by any extension.
• The extension recognizes pi's cursor by its escape sequence (\x1b[7m…\x1b[0m). If a future pi release changes that format, this extension needs a matching update.
• Everything else keeps working as usual: working spinner, thinking-level border colors, bash mode, autocomplete, history, and IME input (the invisible cursor marker used for input-method positioning is preserved on every path).

How it works (optional reading)

pi renders the input box every frame with the cursor drawn as a reverse-video block. On session_start this extension swaps in a wrapper editor (via ctx.ui.setEditorComponent). The wrapper calls pi's original render, then rewrites just the cursor portion of each line according to your style — colorizing it, inserting a beam with width borrowing, underlining it, or stripping it entirely (hardware mode). Cell widths are preserved so alignment never breaks.

Compatibility

Verified against pi 0.86.0. Uses only public extension APIs. Skips itself in print/RPC modes.

License

MIT