pi-status-anim

An animated working row for the pi coding agent. While the agent streams, the default status line is replaced with a richer, animated status: a stable verb per phase, an animated glyph, live token counts, stall feedback, and a few easter eggs. The whole row — verbs, glyph, tokens, timer, easter eggs, stall feedback — lives here.

Screenshots

Animated row in action — click to watch (placeholders until real captures are added):

Features

• Phased verbs — the verb changes only when the agent-loop moves between phases (requesting → thinking → responding); tool calls never change it.
• Per-phase glyph animation — a travelling dot while requesting, a soft star set while thinking/responding, braille while tools run.
• Robot avatar (robotAvatar) — instead of abstract glyphs, a 5-cell animated robot face across every state: it blinks while waiting, rolls its eyes up with a slow brain pulse while thinking, works with a fast brain pulse while tools run, smiles while responding, reacts to tool results (happy / sad for 2s, sad in red), falls asleep when stalled, and is pleased when done. Off by default.
• Token counter — the full content snapshot is recomputed on every update (no accumulation), shown as ↓ 1.2k with an optional · 42/s rate and a smooth odometer.
• Stall feedback — no fresh tokens and no active tool for 3s: the glyph fades to red, the glimmer goes dark, and a tier word appears (worried → desperate → existential). Active tools never produce a false stall.
• Liveliness — animation speed and presence follow the real token flow.
• Width gating — suffix parts are dropped from the lowest priority up so the row never wraps, no matter how narrow the terminal.
• Interrupt hint — restored on the row when nothing else is shown.
• Easter eggs — git status, model name, time of day, fun facts after 60s of thinking, anxiety gradient after 60s.
• Wave / breath — with animChance, the glimmer is replaced for the agent-loop by a travelling light wave or a calm breathing pulse.
• reducedMotion — static glyph and plain text, single stall timer.

Install

pi install npm:pi-status-anim                          # from the npm registry
pi install git:github.com/oglenyaboss/pi-status-anim   # or directly from GitHub

No runtime dependencies: the only import from the pi package is import type (erased at runtime). /reload recreates the extension and re-reads the config; there is no hot reload.

Configuration

All options live in ~/.pi/agent/settings.json under the statusAnim key. Defaults are shown.

You can also configure from the TUI: /statusanim opens an interactive menu of every option, and /statusanim <key> <value> sets one option directly (e.g. /statusanim robotAvatar on). Tab completes option keys and on|off. Changes are written to settings.json; run /reload to apply them.

{
  "statusAnim": {
    "enabled": true,
    "words": [],              // extra verbs appended to the defaults
    "intervalMs": 50,         // text-animation clock
    "showTimer": true,
    "timerAfterMs": 1000,
    "tokenCounter": true,
    "tokenAfterMs": 3000,     // when tokens appear (flicker guard)
    "tokenRate": true,        // show tok/s
    "effortSuffix": "",        // empty = auto from thinking level
    "stallAfterMs": 3000,
    "stallTiers": true,
    "modelEggs": true,
    "timeEggs": true,
    "gitStatus": true,
    "funFacts": true,
    "anxietyGradient": true,
    "reducedMotion": false,
    "toolDetail": true,       // "(grep · 247 files)" when args carry a count
    "queueHint": true,        // "(+ queued)"
    "phaseGlyphs": true,      // per-phase glyph sets
    "robotAvatar": false,     // robot face across all phases (off by default)
    "animChance": 0.25,       // probability of wave/breath per agent-loop
    "animAfterMs": 1500,
    "labelActive": "∴ Thinking…",
    "labelDone": "∴ Thinking"
  }
}

Development

npm install          # devDependency only (types for typecheck)
npm test             # typecheck + selfcheck + log-smoke + runtime-sim
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit
npm run selfcheck    # pure-module checks (width gating, FSM, stall math)
npm run runtime-sim  # end-to-end sim against a fake pi API
npm run log-smoke    # debug-logger smoke test

CI runs the same suite on every push (.github/workflows/ci.yml).

Notes

• The interrupt hint text is fixed (escape): pi's keybinding registry is not exposed to the extension API, so the hint cannot follow custom keybindings.
• The queue hint shows (+ queued) — the extension API exposes only whether messages are pending, not the count.
• Colors are always derived from the active theme tokens (never hardcoded), including the stall fade, glimmer, wave/breath, and anxiety gradient.

License

MIT