@faiku/pi-inline-image-paste

A pi extension that attaches pasted images to your message as real image content, instead of dropping a temporary file path into the text.

Out of the box, pasting a screenshot into pi inserts the path of a file in your temp directory. With this extension the image itself is queued: a thumbnail appears above the editor, a [image N] token marks its place in your text, and on send the token is swapped for the image bytes. The model receives the picture; the transcript shows a short note describing it.

What it does

| Action | Result | |---|---| | ctrl+v with an image on the clipboard | Image queued, thumbnail shown, [image N] inserted at the cursor | | ctrl+v with text on the clipboard | Pasted as text, exactly as pi does it | | Drag and drop an image file into the terminal, or paste its path | The image is queued and the path is replaced | | A terminal that streams image bytes into the paste | The image is queued from the raw byte stream | | /image-attach shot.png | Same, by hand |

The paste keybinding is whatever app.clipboard.pasteImage is bound to in your keybindings, so a rebinding is picked up automatically. It defaults to ctrl+v (alt+v on Windows). On macOS use ctrl+v, not cmd+v: terminals deliver cmd+v as a text paste, and there is usually nothing to read from the clipboard in that case.

Commands

| Command | Effect | |---|---| | /image-attach <path> [path…] | Attach image files to the next message | | /image-list | Show the queued images with their number, size, and format | | /image-clear | Drop every queued image and remove the tokens from the editor | | /image-notes | Toggle the [image N: 1440x900 PNG, 231 KB] note in sent messages |

The preview

Above the editor you get a strip of thumbnails, drawn with the terminal's own graphics protocol (kitty, iTerm2, WezTerm, Ghostty) and a compact #1 1440x900 PNG label everywhere else, plus a caption:

 #1 screenshot.png  #2 diagram.png  +1 more
 3 images attached · 1.2 MB · /image-clear to remove
> compare these two [image 1] [image 2] [image 3]

Behaviour worth knowing

• The token is the manifest. An image is queued when its [image N] token is in the editor, and dropped as soon as you delete that token: the thumbnail leaves with it, without waiting for the message. Clearing the editor therefore drops the queued images too; re-paste or use /image-attach to get them back. A submitted message that somehow has no token (RPC, print mode) still sends everything queued, so nothing is lost on a path with no editor to watch.
• pi does not render images in the transcript. It only draws the text part of a user message, so each image leaves a one-line note behind. /image-notes turns the notes off; the images are still sent, and a message made only of images falls back to (2 images attached) so the turn is not blank.
• Queued images are cleared on send, including while the model is streaming (ctrl+v mid-answer works: the image joins the steered or follow-up message).
• Limits are enforced per message: 20 images and 32 MB by default. The extension asks before queueing anything over the limit.
• Extension commands run before the input event, so typing /model-global never swallows your attachments.
• Formats: PNG, JPEG, GIF, and WebP. Anything else is rejected with a message rather than attached.
• Images are never written to disk. Bytes are held in memory and passed straight to the model.
• The raw-stdin capture only ever withholds an image paste; every other byte is forwarded to pi's input pipeline unchanged and in its original order, and the original listeners are restored on session_shutdown, including on /reload.

Configuration

Optional block in <agent-dir>/settings.json (default ~/.pi/agent/settings.json):

{
  "imagePaste": {
    "maxImages": 20,
    "maxTotalMb": 32,
    "showNotes": true,
    "showPreview": true,
    "maxThumbnails": 4
  }
}

showNotes is the only key /image-notes writes; it is merged into the file, leaving everything else alone.

Install

From npm (recommended):

pi install npm:@faiku/pi-inline-image-paste

Try it for a single run without installing:

pi -e npm:@faiku/pi-inline-image-paste

From a local checkout:

ln -s "$PWD" ~/.pi/agent/extensions/pi-inline-image-paste

Per project, or for one run:

pi --extension ./index.ts

# add to <project>/.pi/settings.json
{ "extensions": ["/absolute/path/to/pi-inline-image-paste"] }

Development

npm install          # dev-only: types for typechecking
npm test             # unit tests for sniffing, capture, attachments, config
npm run typecheck    # tsc --noEmit

Layout: index.ts (wiring: events, capture, editor reconciliation, commands), lib/images.ts (magic-byte sniffing, dimensions, formatting), lib/raw-stdin.ts (byte-level paste interception), lib/paste.ts (paste keybinding and dropped-path parsing), lib/clipboard.ts (clipboard backends), lib/attachments.ts (tokens, notes, the send-time transform), lib/attachment-bar.ts (thumbnail strip), lib/config.ts and lib/settings.ts (settings).

The extension ships as TypeScript source — pi loads .ts entry points directly, so there is no build step.

A note on the capture layer

pi reads stdin and decodes every chunk as UTF-8 before an extension sees it, which turns image bytes into replacement characters. So a terminal that streams an image into the paste cannot be handled through pi's string-level input hook. This extension therefore takes over the data listeners on process.stdin for the duration of the session, inspects raw bytes, and forwards everything that is not an image paste to the listeners it displaced. In practice the clipboard and drag-and-drop paths carry the feature on their own; the raw path exists so a byte-streaming terminal is not left with a corrupted paste in the editor.

License

MIT

pi-inline-image-paste