pi-ask-user

• Faithful omp port — the tabbed ask dialog (Submit review tab, radio/checkbox markers, markdown/code previews with fence splitting and render caching), the inactivity countdown, and the legacy per-question selector path carried over file-by-file.
• Compact transcript — the pending call renders only an Ask · N questions summary; the result renders one compact question → answer line per question (multi-question lines prefixed [id]) — no framed block, no re-listed options.
• Robustness fixes over the omp source — countdown expiry mid-typing keeps the user's answer, live frame-width measurement replaces the hardcoded 80 columns, and dialog failures propagate instead of degrading to a phantom "user cancelled".
• Headless-safe — print/JSON hosts cannot prompt, so the tool is stripped from the active set; a stray call throws a "question was never shown" error instead of hanging.

oh-my-pi's ask tool, migrated to a pi extension.

This is a source migration of the interactive ask feature from oh-my-pi (a fork of badlogic/pi-mono), not a reimplementation: the tool flow, the tabbed ask dialog, the legacy per-question selector path, and the result wording are carried over from packages/coding-agent/src/tools/ask.ts and src/modes/components/ask-dialog.ts, then adapted file-by-file to pi's public extension API. Sister extension of pi-ask-user-lite; the two expose different tools (ask vs ask_user) and should not be enabled together — see pi-ask-user or pi-ask-user-lite? below.

Features

• Tabbed multi-question dialog — one question per tab with header chips in the tab bar, radio markers for single-select, checkboxes for multi; select keys resolve through the injected KeybindingsManager, so rebound keys keep working.
• Submit review gate — calls with 3+ questions or any multi question get a Submit review tab before the answers go out; 1–2 single-select questions advance Enter-to-submit without a review page.
• Markdown/code previews — an option's preview (markdown, fenced code) renders fence-split with render caching. On wide terminals (inner width ≥ 80) the dialog splits into an options pane and a cursor-following preview pane (fzf-style); narrow terminals keep the preview inline under the cursored row.
• Inline Other input with real editor semantics — the dialog implements pi's Focusable contract and embeds a pi-tui Input that renders the input line itself: the hardware cursor and IME candidate window sit at the input point, with multi-char CJK IME commits, grapheme-aware cursor/delete (emoji as one unit), bracketed paste, kitty CSI-u decoding, undo, and kill ring. A countdown expiring mid-typing keeps the typed answer.
• Inactivity countdown — timeoutSeconds is an idle budget: dialog keypresses reset it (not while typing); expiry auto-picks the recommended option (or the first) and marks it auto-selected after timeout.
• Compact transcript — the pending call renders a single Ask · N questions line; the result renders one compact question → answer line per question ([id]-prefixed on multi-question calls) without re-listing unselected options.
• omp semantics kept — cancelling aborts the agent turn; headless hosts (print/JSON) strip the tool at session_start with an execute backstop that errors "question was never shown"; a terminal bell rings on ask (opt out with PI_OMK_ASK_NOTIFY=0); answers persist in the tool result details.

What migrated

| oh-my-pi source | Here | Notes | |---|---|---| | tools/ask.ts — AskTool.execute | index.ts | result-count validation, empty-single-select cancellation (#8265), multi-question loop with navigation state, cancel-aborts-turn semantics | | tools/ask.ts — askSingleQuestion + custom-input title windowing | src/ask-legacy.ts | multi-select toggle loop with + Done selecting, recommended suffixes, Other via editor, timeout tolerance heuristic (TIMEOUT_DETECTION_TOLERANCE_MS), (i/n) progress titles | | modes/components/ask-dialog.ts — AskDialogComponent | src/ask-dialog.ts | tabbed dialog, Submit review tab, radio/checkbox markers, markdown/code previews with fence splitting and render caching, fixed-height panel sizing, cursor-following scroll, inactivity countdown, malformed-args normalization | | modes/components/countdown-timer.ts | src/countdown-timer.ts | verbatim | | modes/components/overlay-box.ts (subset) | src/overlay-box.ts | topBorder/divider/row/bottomBorder/fit | | prompts/tools/ask.md | index.ts | tool description, verbatim | | theme symbol defaults (modes/theme/symbols.ts) | src/compat.ts | ❯ ◉ ○ ☑ ☐ ╭╮╰╯ |

Adaptation notes (omp surface → pi extension API)

Each omp-internal surface maps onto the closest public pi extension boundary:

• AgentTool + createIf gate → pi.registerTool + session_start strip: print/JSON hosts cannot prompt, so the tool is removed from the active set; if it is still called, execute throws with a "question was never shown" error so the model stops retrying instead of misreading a cancel.
• ArkType schema + reserved-label narrow → typebox schema; the narrow runs at the top of execute.
• concurrency: "exclusive" → executionMode: "sequential" (pi tool batches).
• ExtensionUIContext.askDialog → ctx.ui.custom() mounting AskDialogComponent.
• #presentDialog serial queue → not needed: ui.custom() is a single editor slot and the sequential execution mode already serializes ask calls.
• Nested HookEditorComponent prompts (Other) → an embedded prompt mode inside the dialog: pi extensions own one custom component slot, so the dialog renders the input row itself (#promptActive) with Enter confirm / Esc back.
• Keybindings — omp's global matchesSelectUp/… matchers resolve through the KeybindingsManager pi injects into ui.custom(), so rebound select keys keep working; footer hints use the configured keys.
• ui.select dialog options — pi's select accepts only {signal, timeout}. The legacy path keeps the full omp UIContext logic (initial index, navigation, markers, timeout callbacks) and degrades on pi: no radio/checkbox markers, no initial cursor, no ←/→ question navigation, and option descriptions are dropped from the visible list.
• ui.editor prompt style → pi's ui.editor (multi-line) with a signal race; falls back to ui.input.
• settings ask.timeout / ask.notify → timeoutSeconds tool parameter + terminal bell, opt-out with PI_OMK_ASK_NOTIFY=0 (pi extensions cannot read pi settings or send desktop notifications).
• ToolAbortError + context.abort() → ctx.abort() + thrown error (cancel aborts the agent turn, omp semantics).
• Transcript renderer — omp merges call+result in one framed block that updates in place when the user answers; pi's tool rows append the result render below the call render, so the call slot renders only a Ask · N questions summary line while pending, and the result slot renders one compact question → answer line per question (multi-question lines prefixed [id], with the auto-selected after timeout — not a user choice marker).

Dropped (no pi extension surface): TTS vocalizer, plan-mode timeout suppression, collab guest racing, ACP elicitation forms, /tree re-answer, loadMode: "discoverable", the draft-editor input guard, and renderInlineMarkdown for labels (labels render as plain text; block markdown in questions/previews still uses pi's Markdown component + getMarkdownTheme). Post-2.0 the per-answer note subsystem and the dead chat-redirect surface were also removed (see Unreleased).

Tool schema

ask(
  questions: [
    {
      id: string              // stable identifier, echoed in the answer
      question: string        // shown to the user
      header?: string         // short chip in the tab bar
      options: [{
        label,
        description?,         // tradeoff text under the label
        preview?              // markdown / fenced code shown under the cursored option
      }]
      multi?: boolean         // allow multiple selections
      recommended?: number    // 0-based index; "(Recommended)" added automatically
    }
  ],
  timeoutSeconds?: number     // omp settings ask.timeout, parameterized; idle budget,
                             // dialog keypresses reset it (not while typing Other),
                             // expiry auto-picks the recommended option (or the first)
)

Result semantics (omp wording, verbatim)

User selected: JWT
User provided custom input: mTLS everywhere
User answers:
auth: JWT
deploy: [staging, prod]
deploy: staging (auto-selected after timeout)

Cancelling (Escape) aborts the agent turn — omp's "cancel the whole call" semantics, via ctx.abort() plus a tool error. An unreachable host (print/JSON) raises a different error stating the question was never displayed.

pi-ask-user or pi-ask-user-lite?

Sister packages with intentionally different scopes — pick one, do not enable both:

| | pi-ask-user (this one, tool ask) | pi-ask-user-lite (tool ask_user) | |---|---|---| | Lineage | File-by-file source port of oh-my-pi's ask tool | Pi-native reimplementation of the ask flow | | Dialog | Tabbed dialog; Submit review tab for 3+ questions or any multi; fzf-style side-by-side preview pane on wide terminals | Single question-page dialog with [n/m] counter and per-question status strip; review page after the last question | | Option rows | omp radio/checkbox markers | Numbered (1. label); answers echo the number back | | Previews | Markdown/code, fence-split with render caching | Plain preview lines under the cursored option | | Timeout | Inactivity countdown reset by keypresses (paused while typing); expiry auto-picks the recommended option | Whole-dialog budget; expiry auto-selects recommended and flags timedOut | | Notes | Not available (removed post-2.0) | Per-answer notes via n, echoed to the LLM | | Chat redirect | Removed (dead omp surface) | Reserved Chat about this row | | Cancel | Aborts the agent turn (omp semantics) | Tool settles cancelled; the LLM is told to proceed conservatively | | Extras | Terminal bell (opt out with PI_OMK_ASK_NOTIFY=0) | /ask-demo interactive battery |

Install

# per-project
mkdir -p .pi/extensions && cp -r packages/extensions/pi-ask-user .pi/extensions/

# or globally
cp -r packages/extensions/pi-ask-user ~/.pi/agent/extensions/

Or load ad hoc:

pi -e ./packages/extensions/pi-ask-user/index.ts

Development

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm test

License

MIT — the migrated oh-my-pi sources retain their upstream origin (can1357/oh-my-pi, fork of badlogic/pi-mono).