@bacnh85/pi-fff

A maintained Pi package based on upstream @ff-labs/pi-fff. It adds FFF-powered search tools by default and can optionally replace Pi's built-in find and grep tools with FFF, a Rust-native SIMD-accelerated file finder.

What it does

| Built-in tool | pi-fff replacement | Improvement | |---|---|---| | find (spawns fd) | fffind (FFF fileSearch) | Fuzzy matching, frecency ranking, git-aware, pre-indexed | | grep (spawns rg) | ffgrep (FFF grep) | SIMD-accelerated, frecency-ordered, mmap-cached, no subprocess | | @ file autocomplete (fd-backed) | @ file autocomplete (FFF-backed, default) | Fuzzy ranking from FFF index/frecency |

Key advantages over built-in tools

• No subprocess spawning — FFF is a Rust native library called through the Node binding. No fd/rg process per call.
• Pre-indexed — files are indexed in the background at session start. Searches are instant.
• Frecency ranking — files you access often rank higher; cross-session learning is enabled when a frecency database path is configured.
• Query history — query-to-file selection history and combo boost are enabled when a history database path is configured.
• Git-aware — modified/staged/untracked files are boosted in results.
• Smart case — case-insensitive when query is all lowercase, case-sensitive otherwise.
• Fuzzy file search — find uses fuzzy matching, not glob-only. Typo-tolerant.
• Cursor pagination — grep results include a query-bound cursor for fetching the next page; invalid, expired, and cross-tool cursors are rejected.

Install

Requirements:

• pi

Install as a pi package

Via npm (recommended):

pi install npm:@bacnh85/pi-fff

Project-local install:

pi install -l npm:@bacnh85/pi-fff

Tools

ffgrep

Search file contents. Smart-case, auto-detects regex vs literal, git-aware. Results ranked by frecency (most-accessed files first).

Parameters:

• pattern — search text or regex
• path — directory/file constraint (e.g. src/, *.ts)
• exclude — exclude paths (e.g. test/,*.min.js)
• caseSensitive — force case-sensitive (default: smart-case)
• context — context lines around matches
• limit — global max matches per page (default: 20)
• outputMode — "content" (default), "files_with_matches" (one preview per file), or "count" (file match counts)
• cursor — pagination cursor from previous result

Definition lines (function/class/interface/enum declarations) are auto-expanded with 3 lines of context for scannability.

fffind

Fuzzy file name search. Frecency-ranked, git-aware, multi-word AND narrowing.

Parameters:

• pattern — fuzzy query (e.g. main.ts, src/ config)
• path — directory constraint
• exclude — exclude paths
• limit — max results (default: 30)
• cursor — pagination cursor from previous result

When the top result strongly dominates (exact match or score > 2x runner-up), a → Read hint is shown.

resolve_file

Resolve a vague file reference to an exact path. Auto-resolves when the top FFF candidate strongly dominates; returns ranked candidates when ambiguous.

Parameters:

• pattern — fuzzy file query (e.g. "auth middleware", "Chart component")
• limit — max candidates when ambiguous (default: 8)

fff_multi_grep

Search file contents for any of multiple literal patterns in one pass. Uses FFF multi-grep. Useful for renamed symbols, aliases, or spelling variants.

Parameters:

• patterns — array of literal patterns (1-10)
• path — directory/file constraint
• exclude — exclude paths
• context — context lines around matches
• limit — global max matches per page (default: 20)
• outputMode — "content", "files_with_matches", or "count" (default: "content")
• cursor — pagination cursor from previous result

related_files

Find companion files sharing the same base name stem. Discovers test files, type definitions, styles, stories, and other companions.

Parameters:

• path — reference file path (fuzzy or exact)
• limit — max related files (default: 8)

Example: related_files({ path: "src/Chart.tsx" }) → Chart.test.tsx, Chart.module.css, Chart.types.ts

Commands

• /fff-health — show FFF status (indexed files, git info, frecency/history DB status)
• /fff-rescan — trigger a file rescan
• /fff-mode <mode> — switch mode; transitions into or out of override automatically reload Pi

Modes

• tools-and-ui (default): registers fffind, ffgrep as additional tools + FFF-backed @ autocomplete
• tools-only: additional tools only; keep pi's default @ autocomplete
• override: replaces pi's built-in find and grep + FFF-backed @ autocomplete. The overrides retain Pi's built-in schemas: find accepts pattern, path, and limit; grep accepts pattern, path, glob, ignoreCase, literal, context, and limit.

Mode precedence:

1. --fff-mode <mode> CLI flag
2. PI_FFF_MODE=<mode> environment variable
3. default (tools-and-ui)

Flags

• --fff-mode <mode> — set mode (see above)
• --fff-frecency-db <path> — path to frecency database (also: FFF_FRECENCY_DB env)
• --fff-history-db <path> — path to query history database (also: FFF_HISTORY_DB env)
• --fff-enable-root-scan — allow indexing when launched from / (also: FFF_ENABLE_ROOT_SCAN=1 env). FFF refuses to init at the filesystem root by default. Home directory scanning is always enabled for pi.

Data

Database persistence is opt-in. Without --fff-frecency-db/FFF_FRECENCY_DB and --fff-history-db/FFF_HISTORY_DB, FFF 0.9.6 disables frecency and query-history persistence. When paths are provided, FFF stores file access frequency/recency and query-to-file selection history at those paths.

No project files are uploaded anywhere by this extension. It runs locally and only uses the configured LLM through pi itself.

Security

• No shell execution
• No network calls in the extension code
• No telemetry
• No credential handling beyond whatever pi and your configured model provider already do
• Persistent search state is created only at explicitly configured database paths