🚀 send-to-pi

简体中文 | English

Seamlessly bridge your web browser to the Pi Coding Agent. Send snippets, articles, or links directly into your Pi terminal prompt with one click or keyboard shortcut.

💡 Why send-to-pi?

Modern AI coding agents (like Pi, Claude Code, Aider) shine inside the terminal, but a massive portion of a developer's daily context lives inside the browser—GitHub Issues, PR reviews, documentation, Stack Overflow threads, error logs, and technical blog posts.

Traditionally, sending webpage context to an agent means:

1. Selecting text
2. Switching windows
3. Pasting into the terminal
4. Dealing with broken indentation or destroyed tables, then typing instructions manually

With send-to-pi: Right-click on any selected text, link, or page ➔ The text is instantly formatted into Markdown and prefilled into your Pi terminal input box, with the source title & URL cleanly formatted.

• 🎯 Prefill Mode (No Auto-Submit): The prompt is populated into the editor without auto-submitting. You can review, refine, or append instructions before pressing Enter.
• 📝 HTML to Markdown Preservation: Selection captures <pre><code> blocks, language tags, indentation, <table> grids, lists, quotes, and links without loss. Falls back gracefully when restricted.
• 📖 Clean Article Extraction (Readability Mode): Extract clean article markdown stripped of navigation, footers, sidebars, and ads. Pi gets immediate full-text context without extra fetching.
• ⌨️ Keyboard Shortcut: Instant delivery with Alt+Shift+S (Cmd+Shift+S on macOS) right after highlighting text or code.
• 🔄 Dynamic Port Discovery & Anti-Collision: Pi sessions automatically probe 18091~18095 and track the most active session in ~/.pi/send-to-pi.json.
• ⚡ Cold-Start Auto-Wake: If Pi isn't running, it automatically opens your terminal, starts Pi, and populates the text once the session boots up.
• 🍏 True Cross-Platform: Native terminal launch support for macOS (Terminal.app, iTerm2, Ghostty, WezTerm), Windows (Windows Terminal, PowerShell), and Linux.
• 🔒 100% Local & Private: All communication happens via 127.0.0.1. No cloud proxy, no data logging.

🛠️ Architecture

sequenceDiagram
    autonumber
    actor User as Developer
    participant Browser as Chrome Extension
    participant Bridge as Bridge Daemon (:18090)
    participant Pi as Active Pi Session (18091~18095)

    User->>Browser: Select or Extract Article (Menu / Shortcut)
    Browser->>Bridge: HTTP POST /send (Markdown, URL, Title)
    alt Active Pi Running
        Bridge->>Bridge: Read ~/.pi/send-to-pi.json or probe ports
        Bridge->>Pi: Forward to port /receive
        Pi->>Pi: ctx.ui.setEditorText() (Prefill)
        Bridge-->>Browser: 200 OK (Prefilled)
    else Pi Not Running (Cold Start)
        Bridge->>Bridge: Save to ~/.pi/pending-browser-input.txt
        Bridge->>User: Launch Terminal (osascript / wt.exe) & run `pi`
        User->>Pi: Session Boots
        Pi->>Pi: Read pending file & prefill input box
        Bridge-->>Browser: 200 OK (Launched)
    end

📦 Quick Start (3 Steps)

Step 1: Install the Pi Extension

You can install it directly via Pi's built-in package manager:

pi install npm:send-to-pi

(Or from GitHub: pi install git:github.com/Wude-m/send-to-pi)

Step 2: Start the Bridge Daemon

The bridge daemon runs in the background on your machine:

# Using npx directly
npx send-to-pi start

# Or clone and run
git clone https://github.com/Wude-m/send-to-pi.git
cd send-to-pi
npm start

(Tip: macOS users can run bash scripts/start-mac.sh to run in background. Windows users can double-click scripts/start-win.vbs for silent background execution.)

Step 3: Load the Chrome Extension

You don't need to hunt for the folder manually! Just run:

npx send-to-pi extension

This will print the exact folder path and automatically open the extension directory in your file manager. Then:

1. Open Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge and navigate to chrome://extensions/.
2. Toggle on Developer mode in the top-right corner.
3. Click Load unpacked and select the folder that just opened.
4. You're all set!

⌨️ How to Use

1. Send Selected Text / Code (Markdown):
   • Highlight text or code ➔ Right-click ➔ Choose 🚀 Send Selection to Pi;
   • Or press shortcut Alt+Shift+S (Cmd+Shift+S on macOS).
2. Send Clean Article (Readability Mode):
   • Right-click anywhere on the webpage ➔ Choose 🚀 Send Clean Article to Pi.
   • The article body is parsed into clean Markdown without ads or navigation menus.
3. Send Hyperlink:
   • Right-click any link ➔ Choose 🚀 Send Link to Pi.

The formatted context will immediately appear at your terminal cursor:

[Source]: GitHub - earendil-works/pi-coding-agent (https://github.com/...)

```typescript
export default function (pi: ExtensionAPI) { ... }

_ [Cursor waits here for your instructions]

---

## ⚙️ Configuration & Terminal Customization

You can configure options via environment variables when launching the daemon:

| Environment Variable | Default | Description |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| `PI_BRIDGE_PORT` | `18090` | Port listened by the Bridge Daemon |
| `PI_INTERNAL_PORT` | `18091` | Starting port for active Pi sessions (probes 18091~18095) |
| `PI_WORKDIR` | Current directory | Default working directory when auto-launching Pi |
| `PI_TERMINAL` | Auto-detect | Preferred terminal: `iterm2`, `ghostty`, `terminal`, `wezterm`, `alacritty` |

Example on macOS:
```bash
PI_TERMINAL=ghostty PI_WORKDIR=~/mycode npx send-to-pi start

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are warmly welcome! Whether it's:

• Supporting Firefox / Safari extensions
• Adding more terminal emulators
• Providing Homebrew / AUR packages

Please feel free to open an Issue or Pull Request.

📄 License

MIT License © 2026 Wude