pi-worklist

pi-worklist gives Pi two deliberately different lists. Session Tasks track the concrete work in the current coding session. Project Goals track the larger outcomes shared by every Pi session in a Git repository.

Features

• Branch-aware Session Tasks survive /resume and follow /tree, /fork, and /clone.
• Session Tasks stay intentionally small and title-only, so they represent executable chunks rather than broad outcomes.
• Session Task array order is a canonical queue that supports stable-ID insertion and movement.
• A new Pi session starts with an empty Session Task list.
• Project Goals persist at <git-root>/.pi/worklist.json and can be committed with the repository.
• /tasks opens an interactive two-section dashboard.
• A compact widget shows the active Project Goal and up to three unfinished Session Tasks.
• The worklist model tool manages both scopes through one consistent API.
• A Pi-free external CLI lets scripts and other agents manage Project Goals without a running Pi session.
• Project Goal completion, reopening, archival, and deletion require explicit user intent.
• Managed Session Task operations accept only existing open or active Project Goal associations and detect edits to the selected goal before reconciliation.
• Cross-process locking and atomic replacement prevent concurrent Pi processes from losing updates or corrupting the project file.
• A versioned inter-extension contract defines bounded, capability-negotiated integration over Pi's shared event bus.

Install

Install the published package from npm:

pi install npm:pi-worklist

View it in the Pi package gallery or on npm.

Install directly from GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/max-miller1204/pi-worklist

Try a checkout without installing it:

pi -e ./src/extension.ts

Usage

Run /tasks with no arguments to open the dashboard. Use Tab to switch lists and arrow keys to navigate. In Session Tasks, a appends, i inserts before the selected task, and Shift+Up or Shift+Down moves the selected task. Project Goals support a to add but do not support insertion or reordering. In either scope, use e to edit, Space or Enter to advance status, d to delete, and Escape to close. The dashboard keeps the current list and the selected task across each action, so a moved task stays selected at its new position. Session Task edits change the title, while Project Goal edits can also change the description.

Direct commands are useful in RPC mode and scripts:

/tasks session list
/tasks session add Write RPC regression tests
/tasks session add --before <anchor-id> Reproduce the failure first
/tasks session add --after <anchor-id> Verify the dashboard behavior
/tasks session add Verify the dashboard behavior --after <anchor-id>
/tasks session move <task-id> --before <anchor-id>
/tasks session move <task-id> --after <anchor-id>
/tasks session update <id> Replace the task title
/tasks session status <id> doing
/tasks project list
/tasks project add Replace legacy authentication -- Migrate every supported client
/tasks project update <id> -- Replace the goal description
/tasks project set_active <id>
/tasks project complete <id>

Text after -- is stored as the optional Project Goal description for add and update commands. Session Tasks do not support descriptions. Session Task add accepts either --before <anchor-id> or --after <anchor-id> and appends when neither is supplied. Session Task move requires exactly one of those stable-ID anchors. An anchor flag and its ID may lead the arguments or trail them, but only one anchor flag is accepted per command. Project Goals do not accept placement or movement. Typing a Project Goal lifecycle command is explicit user intent. The model-facing tool instead requires confirm=true, and its prompt rules prohibit setting that flag without an explicit request.

Storage semantics

Session Tasks are stored as versioned Pi custom entries in the current session tree. Each snapshot carries an opaque concurrency token that follows the active /tree, /fork, /clone, or resumed branch. Snapshot version 3 can retain a validated version 1 managed projection on a task with a non-empty Project Goal association. The projection contains the producer and external workflow-step identity, approved plan revision, orchestration run ID, timestamps, lightweight read-only execution state, and bounded result or session-contribution references. Managed metadata without a Project Goal ID is detached during snapshot migration rather than being persisted as an orchestrator-managed task. Attempts, retries, logs, dependencies, artifacts, evidence, and recovery remain canonical in pi-orchestrator and are omitted during projection normalization. Snapshots written by earlier releases are still loaded, derive their token from the Pi custom entry ID when necessary, retain existing task IDs, and drop legacy descriptions during in-memory migration. The next Session Task mutation writes the migrated state as snapshot version 3. A branch without a snapshot uses the opaque baseline token 0. Completed tasks remain in canonical queue order. Ordinary Session Task reads and mutation results omit managed metadata. Only the active goal and an intentionally bounded list of incomplete task titles and statuses are added to the current turn's system prompt, preserving their relative queue order.

Project Goals use a schema-versioned JSON file at .pi/worklist.json in the canonical Git root. The file carries a monotonic numeric revision, while application and protocol callers receive that revision as an opaque string. Legacy files without a revision remain readable at revision 0 and gain revision 1 on their next mutation. Optional expected-revision checks run under the same cross-process lock as persistence and return a typed conflict without rewriting stale state. Session Task expected-revision checks run inside the serialized mutation queue and return the active branch token in conflicts. A semantic no-op preserves the Project Worklist file bytes, Project Goal timestamps, Project Worklist revision, Session Task snapshot count, and Session Task branch token. The file is human-readable and suitable for version control. A malformed or unsupported file is reported and never overwritten automatically. Project Goal operations are unavailable outside a Git repository, while Session Tasks continue to work normally. Orchestration goal selection returns the stable goal ID, its monotonic updatedAt token, and the containing Project Worklist revision. Done or archived goals must be explicitly reopened before orchestration. Archival and confirmed deletion preserve existing Session Task projections for inspection without silently changing the Session Task branch, so closed or temporarily orphaned projections remain visible but cannot receive new managed mutations. Reopening the same goal restores eligibility under its stable ID, while deletion never silently recreates or reassigns the goal.

Model tool

The worklist tool accepts scope=session|project and actions including list, add, move, update, set_status, set_active, complete, reopen, archive, and delete. For Session Tasks, add optionally accepts exactly one of beforeId or afterId, while move requires exactly one. Moves preserve the task ID, title, status, and Project Goal association. Self-placement, already-satisfied placement, identical Session Task updates, and repeated status changes succeed without writing another session snapshot. Session Tasks use concise, self-contained titles without descriptions. Agents are instructed to split non-trivial work into several concrete, independently completable Session Tasks instead of copying the broad end goal into one task. Session Task statuses are todo, doing, and done. Project Goal statuses are open, active, done, and archived. Only activation is a non-destructive direct Project Goal status change.

Inter-extension contract

The version 1 machine-readable contract is exported from pi-worklist/integration-contract. It defines stable pi.events channel names, protocol and capability versions, request and result unions, actor and run correlation metadata, bounded projections, managed external identities, revisions, idempotency, deterministic mutation metadata, typed errors, timeouts, and change events. The contract deliberately excludes Project Goal completion, archival, deletion, and rewriting operations. Approved Project Goal batch creation requires explicit approval evidence in its payload.

See Pi Worklist Integration Protocol v1 for the transport rules, fallback behavior, operation ownership, and approval boundary shared with pi-orchestrator. Importing the contract has no side effects and does not instantiate a SessionStore or register an event handler.

External CLI

External agents and scripts can manage Project Goals without a running Pi session. The published package ships a compiled pi-worklist bin, so no development checkout is needed:

npx pi-worklist project list
npx pi-worklist project show <id>
npx pi-worklist project add Support goal templates -- Let teams share reusable goal outlines
npx pi-worklist project update <id> Replace the title -- Replace the description
npx pi-worklist project set_active <id>
npx pi-worklist project complete <id> --confirm

The CLI routes every mutation through the same service, cross-process lock, and atomic replacement as a live Pi session, so concurrent use is safe. list output is deliberately compact without descriptions; show <id> prints one goal in full detail. Lifecycle actions (complete, reopen, archive, delete) require --confirm, mirroring the model tool's explicit-intent rule; an omitted flag exits with code 3 and changes nothing. Exit code 4 reports a concurrent-change conflict; re-read current state before retrying. --json prints the full deterministic application envelope, on stdout for success and stderr for failure, and --cwd <dir> resolves the Git root from another directory. The complete command reference in docs/cli.md is generated from src/cli-contract.ts, the same contract that renders the CLI help and agent guidance. In a development checkout, node src/cli.ts project <action> runs the same CLI; running the TypeScript entry point directly requires Node 22.18 or newer (for example Node 24), which strips types natively. On older Node versions, including the Node 20 floor of the package's engines range, the TypeScript entry point fails with an Unknown file extension ".ts" error, while the compiled bin has no such requirement. Session Tasks are intentionally unavailable here because they live inside a Pi session tree. A Claude Code skill in .claude/skills/worklist/ teaches Claude sessions in this repository to use the CLI under the same guardrails.

Development

git clone https://github.com/max-miller1204/pi-worklist.git
cd pi-worklist
npm install
npm run check
npm run pack:check

The test suite includes real Pi RPC load tests in temporary repositories. One RPC test loads separate provider and consumer fixtures and verifies a capability-negotiation round trip over the shared pi.events bus. The package uses TypeScript source directly because Pi loads extensions through jiti.

Publishing and the Pi gallery

The package is published to npm and listed in the Pi package gallery. The pi-package npm keyword and pi.extensions manifest let the gallery discover releases automatically without a separate submission process.

Future releases

Start from a clean, current main branch and authenticate with npm:

git switch main
git pull --ff-only
npm login --auth-type=web
npm whoami

Install the locked dependencies and run every release check:

npm ci
npm run verify
npm audit --audit-level=high

Create the release commit and tag with the appropriate semantic version bump:

npm version patch
# Use `npm version minor` or `npm version major` when appropriate.

Publish the new public package, then push the version commit and tag:

npm publish --access public
git push origin main --follow-tags

Verify npm, Pi installation, and the gallery after publication:

npm view pi-worklist version
pi update npm:pi-worklist

Each npm version is immutable, so bump the version before every subsequent publication. If publication succeeds but the Git push fails, fix the Git problem and retry only the push rather than publishing the same version again. The Pi gallery may take a short time to refresh after npm accepts a release.

License

MIT