pi-glossary

A pi extension that lazy-loads glossary definitions into the system prompt when the user's prompt mentions matching terms.

Why

This lets you keep a shared project vocabulary in one place without bloating every turn's prompt. Definitions are only injected when the current prompt references a matching glossary handle.

More about it in this blog post

How It Works

1. On session start, the extension loads ~/.pi/agent/glossary.json and .pi/glossary.json from the current project.
2. Project entries override global entries when they use the same term.
3. Before an agent starts, it scans the user's prompt for matching glossary terms, aliases, or explicit regex patterns.
4. If terms match, only terms not already loaded in the current session are injected into the system prompt.
5. Loaded glossary handles stay visible for the rest of the session in the footer status as Glossary: term, term.

What It Does

• Loads glossary entries from a project-scoped .pi/glossary.json
• Matches canonical terms and optional aliases out of the box
• Supports custom regex triggers per entry
• Validates glossary entries and shows actionable errors
• Reloads glossary configuration without restarting pi
• Shows loaded glossary handles in the footer status for the whole session
• Avoids re-injecting glossary entries that were already loaded earlier in the session

Installation

pi install git:github.com/ruliana/pi-glossary

To remove:

pi remove git:github.com/ruliana/pi-glossary

After installing or updating the extension, run:

/reload

Project Configuration

Create ~/.pi/agent/glossary.json for global terms and/or .pi/glossary.json inside a project for project-specific terms:

[
  {
    "term": "explore-plan-execute-review",
    "aliases": ["EPER"],
    "definition": "Spawn a team of subagents to explore, plan, execute, and review a task end to end."
  },
  {
    "term": "finance-safe",
    "pattern": "(?:^|[^\\w])finance-safe(?:$|[^\\w])",
    "definition": "Use the conservative workflow: explicit assumptions, no destructive actions, and a reviewer pass before execution."
  }
]

When the same term exists in both files, the project entry wins.

Glossary Entry Fields

Field	Required	Description
term	Yes	Canonical glossary handle
definition	Yes	Definition injected when the entry matches
aliases	No	Additional plain-text aliases
pattern	No	Explicit regex trigger; overrides the default matcher
flags	No	Regex flags, defaults to iu
enabled	No	Set to false to disable an entry
source	No	Descriptive provenance string included in injected context

Validation

Each enabled entry must have:

• a non-empty term
• a non-empty definition
• a valid regex pattern if pattern is provided

If validation fails, /glossary and /glossary reload show an actionable error that identifies the bad entry.

Matching Behavior

If pattern is omitted, the extension builds a case-insensitive, boundary-aware matcher from term plus aliases.

That means these work well out of the box:

• single terms like tophat
• dashed handles like explore-plan-execute-review
• multi-word phrases like railway topic

Use pattern when you want total control over matching.

Commands

Command	Description
/glossary	Show whether the glossary is loaded
/glossary reload	Reload ~/.pi/agent/glossary.json and .pi/glossary.json without restarting pi

Any other form, such as /glossary something, shows a usage hint instead of doing a partial lookup.

Notes

• The extension is user-scoped, and glossary data can be global (~/.pi/agent/glossary.json) or project-scoped (.pi/glossary.json).
• Nothing is injected when the prompt does not mention a glossary handle.
• Once a term is loaded in a session, mentioning it again does not inject it again.
• If you edit the extension itself, run /reload.
• If you edit either glossary file, run /glossary reload.

License

MIT