pi-show-cwd

A pi extension that makes the harness's working directory a first-class thing: you can always see it, and you can change it — without asking the LLM anything.

Two commands, rendered as neat boxed entries in the chat transcript (deterministic UI, zero tokens spent):

• /show-cwd — prints the harness process's current working directory directly into the transcript.
• /change-cwd <dir> — switches the harness process's working directory (process.chdir). Supports:
  • ~ expansion (pi does no shell expansion on command args)
  • - to jump back to the previous directory
  • filesystem-aware argument completion: tab-complete through directories and files, drill with ./.., hidden entries appear when you type a leading .

Legacy aliases /show-pwd and /change-pwd are registered with the exact same handlers, so /pwd muscle memory still surfaces them in the command dropdown.

Why this exists

The harness's cwd is the one fact that every path the agent touches is interpreted against, yet stock pi gives you no direct way to read or move it. This extension closes that gap with two deterministic commands — no model round-trips, no shell indirection: what you get is exactly what process.cwd() says, and /change-cwd is a real process.chdir.

Behavior notes, stated plainly

• Validation before the jump. /change-cwd checks existence and directory-ness before calling chdir, so a bad path produces a friendly boxed error instead of a crash.
• - is a one-deep stack. Only the immediately previous directory is remembered; /change-cwd - with no history says so instead of guessing.
• Empty argument shows usage rather than silently doing nothing.
• The important caveat, surfaced every time. pi pins its session at startup: the agent's bash/read tools and @ file completion keep resolving against the startup directory until pi restarts. Every successful /change-cwd prints this warning in the boxed entry (and as a notify), so the partial nature of the switch is never a surprise. Restart pi in the new directory for a full switch.
• Completion mirrors the filesystem. Directory entries come first, then files, capped at 30 suggestions; broken symlinks and unreadable entries are skipped quietly.

Install

This package lives in pi's global extension directory, so pi discovers it automatically on startup — no settings change, nothing to enable:

~/.pi/agent/extensions/pi-show-cwd/

To use it anywhere else: pi install pi-show-cwd, or try it once with pi -e /path/to/pi-show-cwd.

Files

index.ts       everything: path expansion/completion helpers + command
               registration and the two boxed entry renderers
package.json   pi package manifest (auto-discovered extension)