pi-prompt-control

Manage and minimize Pi's system prompt — config-driven patches, interactive skill toggle, and probe-based prompt capture.

Install

pi install npm:pi-prompt-control

Features

/prompt-dump [path] — Capture the real system prompt

Fires a probe turn so every before_agent_start handler runs (pi-slim, your own extensions, anything). Captures the fully-chained system prompt in turn_start, writes it to a file, and aborts before the LLM call.

/prompt-dump                      # → ./pi-system-prompt-patched.md
/prompt-dump my-prompt.md         # → ./my-prompt.md

Works at fresh start — no prior message needed.

/skills — Interactive skill toggle

Opens a TUI checklist of every loaded skill. Toggle with Space. Unchecked skills are stripped from the system prompt before each turn, saving context tokens.

Skills remain explicitly invokable via /skill:<name> — only their automatic inclusion is toggled off.

/skills           # open the TUI checklist
/skills:reset     # re-enable all skills

State is persisted to:

• ~/.pi/agent/disabled-skills.json (user scope)
• .pi/disabled-skills.json (project scope, overrides user)

Config-driven patches — prompt-patches.json

Place a config file at .pi/prompt-patches.json (project) or ~/.pi/agent/prompt-patches.json (global):

{
  "patches": [
    {
      "name": "remove bash guidance",
      "op": "remove",
      "find": "- Use bash for file operations like ls, rg, find\n"
    },
    {
      "name": "soften a rule",
      "op": "replace",
      "find": "You must always",
      "replace": "Prefer to",
      "regex": false
    },
    {
      "name": "add house rule",
      "op": "append",
      "text": "\n\nPrefer rg over grep.\n"
    },
    {
      "name": "strip a block (regex)",
      "op": "replace",
      "find": "\\n\\nSome block[\\s\\S]*?end of block",
      "replace": "",
      "regex": true
    }
  ]
}

Patch operations

op	Required fields	Description
remove	find	Remove the first occurrence of find
replace	find, replace	Replace the first occurrence of find with replace
append	text	Append text to the end of the prompt

All remove and replace patches support "regex": true and an optional "flags" string (e.g. "gi").

Live reload

The config file is watched — edits take effect on the next message without /reload. Parse errors and validation issues are surfaced via notifications.

How /prompt-dump works

Unlike ctx.getSystemPrompt() (which returns the base prompt), /prompt-dump captures the prompt after all extensions have modified it:

1. Sets a capture flag
2. Sends a probe user message (.)
3. All before_agent_start handlers chain naturally
4. In turn_start, captures ctx.getSystemPrompt() (now fully chained)
5. Writes to file and calls ctx.abort() — no LLM call, no cost

This means it works with any combination of extensions (pi-slim, custom patches, skill-toggle, future extensions) without knowing about them.

Publish through GitHub Actions

This package publishes to npm through .github/workflows/publish.yml.

1. In npm, create a granular access token with publish access and 2FA bypass enabled.

2. In GitHub, add it as repository secret NPM_TOKEN.

3. Bump the package version:

   npm version patch
   git push --follow-tags
   

4. The workflow publishes when a v*.*.* tag is pushed, when a GitHub Release is published, or when run manually from the Actions tab.

The workflow runs npm pack --dry-run, skips versions that are already published, and publishes with npm provenance.

License

MIT