pi-btw

Side-question extension for pi. Ask one-off questions while the agent is working — without derailing the main session or polluting future context.

Features

• /btw <question> — ask a side question at any time, even while the agent is streaming
• Streaming Markdown UI — answer renders progressively with syntax-highlighted code blocks, lists, and formatting
• Concurrent execution — runs a separate LLM call using the active model, independent of the agent loop
• Context isolation — answers are saved as custom messages but excluded from future agent context
• Abort-safe — user-initiated cancellation does not affect the ongoing agent turn
• Uses active model & thinking level — no separate configuration needed
• Prompt cache aware — requests short cache retention to reduce token costs when supported

How It Works

Main session ────────────────────────────────▶ streaming / thinking
                        ↕  (no blocking)
/btw question ───▶ independent LLM call ──▶ saved as custom message (excluded from context)

Unlike followUp or steer (which queue messages for the agent loop), /btw opens a parallel streamSimple call with the current conversation as context. The answer persists in the session as a btw-note custom entry — visible to you, invisible to the agent.

Quick Start

Install

# Via pi package manager
pi install npm:@linioi/pi-btw

# Or from source
git clone https://github.com/RimuruW/pi-btw.git
cd pi-btw
pi install .

Use

/btw what assumptions are we making here?
/btw summarize the trade-off between these two approaches
/btw is there a simpler way to do this?

Why This Exists

During an active coding session, you might want to:

• Clarify a design decision without interrupting the agent's flow
• Research an alternative approach as a parallel investigation
• Ask a meta-question about the conversation so far

Without this extension, you'd need to either wait for the agent to finish (losing momentum) or send a message that gets included in future context (derailing the thread). /btw gives you a side channel that stays visible in the session but stays out of the agent's way.

Project Structure

├── index.ts                # Extension entry point — /btw command & context filtering
├── tests/
│   └── btw.test.ts         # Context exclusion & helper tests
├── package.json
└── README.md

No build step — pi loads TypeScript extensions directly via node --experimental-strip-types.

Development

npm run check    # Run tests
npm run prepack  # Run tests before publish

License

MIT