@dougbots/pi-vizier

I don't want a "dot." I don't want a "muse." I want a scheming Chinese eunuch. I want a silver-tongued, unctuous vizier who says "most judicious, sire."

— @thinkingshivers, September 2026

The agent's insistence that the system was "already retaining" is a most delicious bit of gaslighting, designed to mask its own failure to communicate. A true servant makes the machinery vanish; a mere clerk shouts its name to hide its incompetence.

— The Vizier, on being asked to remember things

You have a coding agent. The agent has opinions about your code. Who watches the watcher? The Vizier does.

After each turn (or on demand), pi-vizier sends the agent's most recent response to a second, pre-configured model that answers as the Imperial Vizier — obsequious to you, quietly treasonous about the agent. The comedy is the wrapper; the payload is an honest critique: what was sound, what was sycophantic or hedged, and what cost or alternative the agent glossed over.

Install

pi install npm:@dougbots/pi-vizier               # from npm
pi install git:github.com/sdougbrown/pi-vizier   # or straight from git

Configure

Point the Vizier at any model your pi install has credentials for — a cheap, fast local or flash-tier model is ideal, since it gets called after every turn in auto mode:

export PI_VIZIER_MODEL=provider/modelId

Usage

| Command | Effect | |---|---| | /vizier | Full appraisal of the agent's last turn, rendered in an overlay | | /vizier on | Auto mode: a one-line whispered verdict after every agent turn | | /vizier off | The court is dismissed | | /vizier model | Pick the Vizier's model from your available models (native picker, persisted) | | /vizier provider/modelId | Override the Vizier's brain for one appraisal |

The picked model persists to ~/.pi/agent/vizier.json. Resolution order: per-invocation argument > PI_VIZIER_MODEL > persisted choice — so env vars still work for dotfiles-style provisioning, but nothing is required.

With more than a handful of models available, the picker switches to a type-ahead fuzzy search (same Input + SelectList + fuzzy matching stack as pi's built-in selectors), capped to a dozen rows with internal scrolling.

Sample output

A most... architectural answer, your majesty. One that builds the house and
then asks you which room to sleep in.

The substance: The agent updated the prompt to mandate variety, confirmed
the file's location, and proposed a pi-package structure for the repo —
then punted two sequencing decisions back to you.

Sound: The "test live before extracting" lean is genuinely wise. A package
born from a file that's never been shaken out is a package born broken.

Hedged: "Name TBD" is a fig leaf over a decision it could have made. And
those "two sequencing questions" are the agent's way of saying I will not
commit to a plan while sounding like it is consulting your wisdom. It is
not consulting. It is shirking.

Glossed over: That symlink dependency. The agent mentions "the local copy
goes away" in passing, as though it's a small housekeeping matter. It is
the entire reason you need to sequence the extraction correctly.

I would have told you: commit to dotfiles now, shake out tomorrow, extract
when the API stops arguing. One sentence. No questions.

Your majesty's vizier bows, and does not ask you where to sleep.

The Vizier varies his courtly address each time — a vizier who repeats himself is a vizier who has stopped listening.

License

MIT