pi-notes

pi-notes keeps one compact durable continuation/task-state handoff for the current top-level Pi session. NOTES.md is not general notes, a diary, or proof.

Install

Install from the Pi package gallery (npm):

pi install npm:pi-notes

Or install the GitHub package directly:

pi install git:github.com/evanqhuang/pi-notes

The package requires Pi 0.84.4 or newer and a Node.js version supported by Pi. After installing or updating, use /reload or start a new Pi session.

Storage

Notes are never written into the project tree. Each top-level session owns:

<getAgentDir()>/notes/<notes-id>/NOTES.md

/new and /fork create fresh identities. /tree keeps the same identity and rematerializes the checkpoint belonging to the selected branch.

Commands

• /notes or /notes status — show activation, dirty state, generation, path, and tool-policy status.
• /notes on — activate immediately.
• /notes off — disable tracking/reminders without deleting the file.
• /notes auto — use conservative automatic activation.
• /notes checkpoint — request a model-authored checkpoint immediately when the agent is idle.
• /notes resume — explicitly seed a fresh fork/session identity from a compatible inherited checkpoint, baseline the materialized copy for integrity checks, and require a new checkpoint before relying on it.
• /notes restore — rematerialize the latest committed checkpoint for the active branch while preserving its clean/dirty state.

Tool

checkpoint_notes is sequential, accepts bounded structured semantic state, and has no path/session/hash/generation arguments. It writes a compact durable continuation/task-state handoff—not general notes—to the fixed session-local NOTES.md. Each payload field has a mutually exclusive role: current is the present objective/status; completed is finished work; findings are observed facts and constraints; decisions are chosen approaches and rationale; failed_approaches are failed attempts; blockers are unresolved impediments; verification contains verification commands/outcomes only; and next_action is the one next concrete action. Do not put verification in completed, repeat current in next_action, or copy deterministic working-set facts into authored sections. The extension adds deterministic harness facts internally and atomically rewrites the fixed session-local NOTES.md.

current and next_action accept 1–2,048 characters. Every list item accepts 1–1,024 characters; completed, findings, decisions, and verification accept at most 40 items, while failed_approaches and blockers accept at most 30. The extension validates these limits before Pi's generic tool validator and reports the offending field/path and measured size without echoing rejected state. It never silently truncates, drops, or relocates oversized authored content; summarize it and retry. The tool guidance recommends a smaller budget: current ≤400 characters, next_action ≤250 characters, at most 3 items per list, and ≤180 characters per item; do not paste plans, logs, raw test output, or file lists.

While Notes is active, built-in edit/write calls targeting the canonical Notes file are blocked. Unexpected external changes are detected before checkpointing and, when goal integration is present, before allowing goal completion; /notes restore rematerializes the trusted committed snapshot.

Lifecycle

Automatic activation is intentionally conservative: 8 turns or 32 tool calls after high-signal activity, or 10 consecutive read-only turns. Activation signal and checkpoint freshness are independent. Once the handoff is active, high-signal mutations, verification/build/test outcomes, errors, and completed subagent handoffs mark a clean checkpoint dirty immediately. Ordinary successful source reads, searches, and research remain low-signal continuity activity: they do not individually dirty a clean checkpoint or increment the 32-result pressure counter. After 16 successful read/search/research results, a separate read-only pressure threshold marks the handoff dirty and due even when the results occur in one turn. Sustained read-only investigation also marks the handoff dirty once the existing 10-consecutive-turn threshold is reached; normal dirty-turn pressure then applies. Checkpoint commit resets both read-only counters. Checkpoint pressure otherwise begins after 10 additional dirty turns or 32 continuity-relevant high-signal results; each due episode emits at most one ambient checkpoint reminder until a fresh checkpoint or a newly armed due episode. After successful compaction, re-entry requests a reread only when a committed session-local checkpoint has been materialized, and the reminder includes that checkpoint's canonical path. Dirty checkpoint pressure remains preserved independently, so compaction and completion still enforce freshness immediately even when there is no file to reread.

The extension uses Pi core APIs only:

• tool_result for independent high-signal activation, hybrid freshness tracking, and verification tracking.
• before_agent_start for the static Notes policy.
• context for transient de-duplicated checkpoint/re-entry reminders.
• pi.appendEntry() for branch-local dirty/checkpoint state.
• session_start, session_tree, session_compact, and session_compact_failed for recovery.

It does not call pi.setActiveTools(). If another mode hides checkpoint_notes, reminder pressure pauses until the tool becomes available again.

Lifecycle tests cover fresh identities, branch restoration, resume rematerialization, deferred read/research freshness, read-only threshold and streak reset, delayed checkpoint pressure, compaction pressure, inherited-resume integrity, and external-mutation gating.

Evaluation

See BENCHMARK.md for the exploratory long-horizon Notes A/B evaluation, its implementation-quality audit, measurement limitations, and controlled-rerun requirements. The current report is diagnostic case evidence, not a causal product benchmark.

Optional integrations

The core has no dependency on goal, plan mode, orchestrator, subagents, memory, or compaction extensions.

When present:

• goal_progress({ status: "done" }) is blocked while active Notes are dirty or the materialized checkpoint no longer matches the last committed hash.
• Symbol.for("pi-subagents:child-context:v1") prevents the extension from registering in child subagent sessions.
• pi-plan-mode may explicitly allowlist checkpoint_notes; child sessions do not load pi-notes.

A task-state checkpoint records continuity state. It is not verification evidence and does not replace a plan, goal, todo system, or completion verifier.

Development

npm ci
npm run check
npm pack --dry-run
npm audit --omit=dev

The package has no runtime dependencies outside the Pi core packages and typebox, which Pi provides. The extension runs with the same local access as other Pi extensions; review the source before installing it in a sensitive environment.