@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

A pi extension that color-codes the active model in the footer, so you can tell at a glance which model family is in use.

It replaces the plain claude-opus-4-8 • medium text in the bottom-right of pi's footer with a background-colored badge. Everything else the default footer shows (cwd, git branch, token stats, context %, and other extensions' status line) is faithfully reproduced.

Colors

Model families are matched by substring against the model id and painted with strongly distinct hues:

| Family | Color | | ------------------------- | ---------------- | | opus | deep purple | | sonnet | bright cyan-blue | | fable | vivid orange | | haiku | green | | gpt, o1, o3, o4 | OpenAI teal | | gemini | Google blue | | grok | slate | | anything else | gray (fallback) |

The foreground color (black or white) is chosen automatically from the background's luminance for readability. The badge follows model changes made via /model or Ctrl+P.

Install

pi install npm:@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

Then reload (or restart pi):

/reload

To try it for a single run without installing:

pi -e npm:@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

Customize

Edit the BADGES array at the top of extensions/colored-model-status.ts. Each entry maps substring keywords to an RGB background (and an optional fg):

const BADGES = [
  { match: ["opus"], bg: [147, 51, 234] },
  { match: ["sonnet"], bg: [14, 165, 233] },
  { match: ["fable"], bg: [234, 88, 12] },
  // …add your own, e.g.:
  { match: ["deepseek"], bg: [30, 90, 200] },
];

Matching is a case-insensitive substring test against the model id, so gpt matches gpt-4o, o3 matches o3-mini, and so on. The first matching entry wins.

How it works

theme.bg() only accepts theme tokens, so to render arbitrary, model-specific colors the extension emits raw SGR truecolor escapes (48;2;R;G;B) directly. It uses ctx.ui.setFooter() to take over the footer and re-implements pi's default footer layout, coloring only the model + thinking-level segment.

Because it re-creates the footer, it mirrors pi's default footer rendering as of the pinned @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent version. If pi's footer layout changes upstream, this extension may need updating to match.

Note on the (auto) context indicator

pi's default footer appends (auto) to the context-usage figure when auto-compaction is enabled. That state is not exposed to extensions, so this reimplementation leaves it blank. If you rely on that indicator, adjust autoInd in the source.

Requirements

Requires a truecolor-capable terminal (most modern terminals: iTerm2, Kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, Windows Terminal, VS Code). Check with:

echo $COLORTERM   # "truecolor" or "24bit"

License

MIT © Yusuke Shibata