pi-chat-layout

A messenger-style conversation layout for the Pi coding agent. It adds actor headers, responsive metadata, turn grouping, date separators, and optional alternating alignment without imposing a model or terminal-font theme.

Light

Dark

Install

pi install npm:pi-chat-layout

Use pi -e npm:pi-chat-layout for one run. Remove it with pi remove npm:pi-chat-layout.

Configuration

The extension works without configuration. For the icons and spacing shown in the screenshots, use IosevkaTerm Nerd Font Mono.

Then create ~/.pi/agent/chat-layout.json:

{
  "icons": {
    "user": "😎",
    "assistant": "",
    "thinking": { "medium": "\udb86\ude52", "high": "\udb86\ude54" }
  },
  "models": {
    "aliases": { "openai-codex/gpt-5.6-sol": "SOL" }
  },
  "thinking": {
    "markerGlyphs": ["ｱ", "ｲ", "ｳ", "ｴ", "ｵ", "ｶ", "ｷ", "ｸ"]
  },
  "header": { "style": "compact" },
  "dates": { "label": "VAULT LOG // {date}" }
}

Every field is optional. Defaults use alternating alignment, 👤 You, 🤖 <provider/model>, separate lower-case thinking metadata, portable ASCII activity markers, and a plain date label.

Options

• layout: alternating (default) or stacked.
• icons.user, icons.assistant, and icons.thinking.<level>: arbitrary strings; use "" to hide an icon.
• actors.user: user label. actors.assistant.name can prefix or replace the model ID.
• models.aliases: exact provider/model matches. Unknown models keep their actual ID.
• header.metadata: any ordered subset of thinking, time, duration, tokens, and cost.
• header.style: separate (default) or compact, which combines the thinking icon, identity, and upper-case level.
• thinking.markerGlyphs: non-empty array used to build deterministic four-glyph activity markers. Mixed-width entries share a stable column.
• dates.label: replaces {date} with the localized date; use "" for an unlabeled divider.

Configuration changes hot-reload. PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR is respected. Invalid JSON keeps the last valid configuration; invalid fields fall back individually and produce a warning. On narrow terminals, low-priority metadata is removed before the header is truncated.

Behavior and compatibility

User headers show submission time. Assistant headers show available thinking, timing, token, and cost metadata. Follow-up assistant steps keep compact diagnostics without repeating the actor header.

Pi does not yet expose a public renderer hook for built-in messages, so the extension decorates its message components. A startup compatibility probe preserves stock rendering when those internals are incompatible. Core Pi packages remain host-provided peer dependencies.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm check
pnpm pack:dry

License

MIT