pi-lean-edit

Safer, cheaper edits by verifying prior reads in the harness instead of the prompt.

Formerly pi-smart-edit.

pi-lean-edit lets the harness verify the model already read the latest text it wants to edit, reducing stale-edit failures without resending old text in edit requests and without the per-read overhead of hash-decorated output.

Install or test

Install permanently:

pi install npm:pi-lean-edit

Test without installing permanently:

pi --no-extensions -e npm:pi-lean-edit

To load it alongside your normal setup:

pi -e npm:pi-lean-edit

Tools

read

{ path: string; offset?: number; limit?: number; columnOffset?: number; columnLimit?: number }

Shows numbered text lines and stores shown ranges as in-memory snapshots for that file. Adjacent line reads merge into wider covered ranges. Huge single-line reads can continue with columnOffset/columnLimit; columnOffset is single-line only, so omit limit or set limit=1. Adjacent/overlapping huge-line column windows compose into wider column coverage.

edit

{ path: string; startLine: number; endLine?: number; startColumn?: number; endColumn?: number; newText: string }
// or
{ path: string; edits: Array<{ startLine: number; endLine?: number; startColumn?: number; endColumn?: number; newText: string }> }

edit applies one or more non-overlapping inclusive ranges after read has shown those ranges for the same canonical file. If the file changed, it fails with file stale, read again. Normal-line column edits require a whole-line snapshot; huge-line column edits can use matching column snapshots. After a successful edit, edited ranges are invalidated. Same-line-count edits preserve unaffected later snapshots; line-count-changing edits invalidate later snapshots.

Metrics

Successful edits record saved characters versus exact-text edit payloads. Failed edits increment failure rate. Global metrics persist at ~/.pi/agent/pi-lean-edit/metrics.json by default, or PI_LEAN_EDIT_METRICS_PATH if set.

Show stats:

/lean-edit-stats

Test

npm test

Notes

read output is capped by line and byte limits. Defaults: PI_LEAN_EDIT_MAX_READ_LINES=2000, PI_LEAN_EDIT_MAX_READ_BYTES=50000.