👻 pi-invisible-continue

Invisible session continuation for pi

Resume the agentic loop without the LLM seeing any new prompt at all.

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The Problem

Every existing "continue" extension sends a visible user message to the LLM:

Package	What the LLM sees
pi-continue	"Continue from the same-session pi-continue/v3 handoff Pi just saved..." (full handoff doc)
pi-hodor	"continue" (literal text)
pi-auto-continue	"continue" (literal text)
pi-retry	"Continue" on max-tokens, or hidden custom trigger on errors

Every one of those changes the LLM's context with new user text. That text influences the next response, sometimes in unintended ways — model changes course, re-reads things it already processed, or treats a bare "continue" as a new task.

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The Solution

pi-invisible-continue captures the internal Agent instance via a prototype monkey-patch on Agent.prototype.prompt. When /continue is invoked, it calls agent.prompt([]) directly — starting a fresh agent loop with an empty prompt array. No message is injected into the context at all:

• The agent loop restarts
• The LLM receives the exact same message list it had before
• No new text, no handoff, no pollution, no session artifact
• Nothing in convertToLlm's path — no filtering needed

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How It Works

Extension loads
  → Monkey-patches Agent.prototype.prompt to capture the Agent instance
  → First real prompt stores the reference

User types "/continue"
  → agent.prompt([]) called directly
  → runAgentLoop([], contextSnapshot, ...)
  → prompts array is empty — no message emitted, no message pushed to context
  → runLoop → streamAssistantResponse → convertToLlm(unmodified messages)
  → LLM sees same messages as before → responds naturally

Why agent.prompt([]) and not agent.continue()?

agent.continue() has a guard that throws Cannot continue from message role: assistant when the last message is from the assistant — which it always is when the agent stops. agent.prompt([]) starts a fresh loop from the current context snapshot without that restriction.

Trade-off: bypasses AgentSession

agent.prompt([]) is called on the Agent directly, bypassing AgentSession._runAgentPrompt(). This means auto-retry on errors and auto-compaction are not triggered after a /continue. For a manual command where the user explicitly said "keep going," this is acceptable — they can always /continue again.

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Usage

Once loaded, use /continue:

Command	What it does
/continue	Resume the loop invisibly. Waits for idle, then fires.
/continue status	Show agent idle state, captured-agent status, and last assistant text (debug).
/continue help	Show this reference.

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Installation

pi install https://github.com/monotykamary/pi-invisible-continue

Or in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json:

{
  "packages": [
    "https://github.com/monotykamary/pi-invisible-continue"
  ]
}

Then /reload or restart pi.

For quick one-off tests:

pi -e ./continue.ts

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Comparison with Other Packages

Feature	pi-invisible-continue	pi-continue	pi-hodor	pi-auto-continue
LLM sees new user text	❌ No	✅ Handoff doc	✅ "continue"	✅ "continue"
Session pollution	None	Full compaction entry + user message	1 user message	1 user message
Mechanism	agent.prompt([])	sendMessage + handoff	sendMessage	sendMessage
Auto-triggered	❌ Manual only	✅ On compaction	✅ On error/length	✅ On agent_end
Retry integration	❌	❌	✅ Error patterns	❌
Complexity	Prototype patch + 1 call	49 files, multi-stage	2 files, config-driven	1 file, loop-based

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About the Hack

The extension uses the public @earendil-works/pi-agent-core package (which pi's extension loader resolves to the same module instance used internally) to import Agent and monkey-patch Agent.prototype.prompt. This captures the live Agent instance when pi first calls agent.prompt() during normal operation.

Then /continue calls agent.prompt([]) — an empty prompt array. The runAgentLoop function spreads the prompts into the context messages, so with an empty array, nothing is added. The loop starts from the unmodified context snapshot and the LLM continues naturally.

This is the approach discussed in pi issue #3721 ("Feature request: Resume agentic loop without sending a message"). The upstream fix would be exposing agent.continue() (or a variant that works from assistant last-message) on AgentSession, but this extension achieves the same effect without waiting for a core change.

License

MIT