pi-monitor

Run background processes with live output in a native floating window — built for pi.

Start a build, a server, a test suite — anything long-running — and watch the output stream in real-time in a native macOS window while you keep working. When it finishes, pi gets notified automatically.

How it works

One tool, everything on disk.

1. LLM calls monitor — starts a background process
2. A floating terminal window opens — streams stdout/stderr live via Glimpse
3. Everything is written to disk — log, pid, exit code
4. When the process finishes — pi is notified via follow-up message with the log path

The process lifecycle is fully managed on disk:

/tmp/pi-monitor/<id>/
├── pid          # process ID
├── command      # the command that was run
├── output.log   # combined stdout and stderr
└── exitcode     # written when the process finishes

No extra tools needed. Use pi's built-in tools to interact:

• Read output → read /tmp/pi-monitor/mon-1/output.log
• List sessions → ls /tmp/pi-monitor/
• Kill a process → kill $(cat /tmp/pi-monitor/mon-1/pid)
• Check if done → presence of exitcode file means finished

Install

pi install npm:pi-monitor

Or from source:

pi install /path/to/pi-monitor

macOS only. Requires Swift toolchain (ships with Xcode or Xcode Command Line Tools).

Usage

Just ask pi to run something in the background. The LLM calls monitor automatically when appropriate:

• "Run the tests and let me know when they finish"
• "Start the dev server in the background"
• "Build the project and show me the output"
• "Tail the logs while I work on something else"

Tool parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
command	string	required	The bash command to run
title	string	command	Window title
width	number	900	Window width in pixels
height	number	500	Window height in pixels

Window features

• Live streaming — stdout in white, stderr in red
• Auto-scroll — follows output, stops when you scroll up
• Copy button — copies all output to clipboard
• Status indicator — green dot while running, gray on exit 0, red on failure
• Line counter and timer — in the status bar

Completion notification

When a monitored process exits, pi receives a follow-up message with:

• Session ID and exit code
• The original command
• Path to the full log file

This lets pi react — read the log, report results, or start the next step.

Project structure

pi-monitor/
├── .pi/extensions/monitor/
│   └── index.ts          # Extension: monitor tool, Glimpse window, disk management
└── package.json          # pi-package manifest

Credits

• pi — the extensible coding agent
• Glimpse — native macOS WKWebView windows

License

MIT