@tylerho/pi-prompt-stash

Saves and restores the editor's draft text in a single slot via ctrl+s, Claude Code style.

Install

pi install npm:@tylerho/pi-prompt-stash

Prompt Stash

Claude Code-style prompt stash: ctrl+s (or /stash) saves the editor's current draft to a single in-memory slot and clears the editor; pressing it again with an empty editor restores the draft verbatim. A footer status (prompt-stash) shows a one-line preview while a stash exists. Single file (index.ts, 84 lines) plus its test.

Key concepts

• Single slot, overwrite semantics — exactly Claude Code's chat:stash. Editor has text → stash it raw and untrimmed (leading/trailing whitespace and newlines preserved), clear the editor. Editor empty or whitespace-only + stash exists → restore it and clear the slot. Editor empty + no stash → no-op. A second stash overwrites the first: there is no stack.
• Module-level state, not session state. stashed is a module-level string | undefined, deliberately outside any session: the stash survives session rebinds (/new, /resume, /fork) within the process, mirroring CC's app-level React state. A full /reload re-imports the module and drops the stash — also like CC losing it on process restart.
• Key-repeat suppression. A held ctrl+s autorepeats (kitty CSI-u repeat events, or legacy raw bytes) and pi filters key releases but not repeats, so without a guard the shortcut would cycle stash → restore → stash while the key is held. toggleStash ignores toggles closer than REPEAT_WINDOW_MS = 300 ms apart, and always updates lastToggleAt — even on a suppressed toggle — so a long hold stays suppressed until the key is released.
• Pure decision logic. The handler is a thin wrapper over three exported pure functions (decideStashAction, shouldToggle, stashPreview) so all semantics are unit-testable without a UI.
• Text only. pi's editor API exposes no pasted images; the stash holds exactly what getEditorText() returns.
• Feedback asymmetry. Stash sets status prompt-stash → stashed: <preview> (clearing the editor is its own visible feedback, so no notification). Restore clears the status and fires ctx.ui.notify("Draft restored", "info").

API

No tools (registerTool), no events (pi.on), no config files, no settings references. Two registrations plus three exported pure functions.

Shortcut: ctrl+s

pi.registerShortcut("ctrl+s", { description: "Stash the current prompt draft, or restore the stashed draft", handler: toggleStash }). Handler signature (ctx: ExtensionContext) => Promise<void> | void (pi's declared type; toggleStash is async); fires from the default editor's key handling (editor-scoped), and ctrl+s is not in pi's reserved-for-extensions conflict list.

Command: /stash

pi.registerCommand("stash", { description: "Stash the current prompt draft, or restore the stashed draft (same as ctrl+s)", handler: async (_args, ctx) => toggleStash(ctx) }). Args ignored; identical behavior to the shortcut. Useful when ctrl+s is captured by a picker-scoped builtin.

UI contract used (via ctx.ui)

• getEditorText(): string — read the current draft.
• setEditorText(text) — clear on stash, fill on restore.
• setStatus("prompt-stash", string | undefined) — footer status line while a stash exists (any footer-rendering extension, e.g. the CC-style footer, shows it on the status line).
• notify("Draft restored", "info") — restore feedback.
• Guard: if (!ctx.hasUI) return; — headless sessions never toggle.

Exported pure functions

| Export | Signature | Behavior | |---|---|---| | shouldToggle | (now: number, lastToggleAtMs: number) => boolean | now - lastToggleAtMs >= REPEAT_WINDOW_MS (300). | | decideStashAction | (editorText: string, stashedText: string \| undefined) => { action: "stash", text: string } \| { action: "restore", text: string } \| { action: "noop" } | Trim-based decision; stash text is the raw untrimmed editor text. | | stashPreview | (text: string, max = 40) => string | Squashes whitespace runs to single spaces, truncates to max chars ending with …. |

Default export: (pi: ExtensionAPI) => void — registers the shortcut and command. Importing ./index.ts (as the test does) is side-effect-free: the default export is defined but never invoked at import time.

Examples

1. Stash a half-written prompt. Mid-draft, the user wants to run something else: ctrl+s saves the draft (raw, untrimmed), clears the editor, and the footer shows prompt-stash: stashed: <first ~40 chars, whitespace-squashed>…. Later, with an empty editor, ctrl+s restores it byte-for-byte and shows a "Draft restored" notification.
2. /stash as the explicit form. Same behavior, no key binding — for discoverability, or as the fallback when ctrl+s is claimed by a picker-scoped builtin while a selector is open.
3. Overwrite, not stack. Draft A is stashed; the user types draft B and hits ctrl+s again — A is gone, B occupies the single slot. Restore yields B.
4. No-op cases. Empty (or whitespace-only) editor with no stash: ctrl+s does nothing — no status change, no notification. Whitespace-only editor text with a stash counts as "empty" and restores.