pi-dumb-zone

A pi coding agent footer built around a colored context-usage bar. As the context window fills, the bar goes green → orange → red to warn you that you may be drifting into the dumb zone: a context so full the model starts dropping details and getting sloppy. Around it the footer also shows git branch and path, token/cost stats, the active model and thinking level, and Anthropic subscription usage.

⎇  master • ~/projects/app                            claude-opus-4-8 • high
↑120k ↓8.4k • R90k W12k • $0.41 • S45% (2h 13m) W73% (5d)   62% ███████░░░░░ (620k/1.0M)

The footer is two rows:

• Row 1 — left: git branch • working directory; right: model name • thinking level.
• Row 2 — left: session token stats (↑sent ↓received • Rcache-read Wcache-write • cost • subscription usage); right: the colored context-usage bar.

Segments are separated by a bullet; empty segments (no branch, no thinking level, no subscription data) are dropped. Works with any provider; only the subscription-usage segment is Anthropic-specific and simply hides for other providers.

The percentage and the whole bar are colored by absolute token usage:

• green (colors.green) while at or below thresholds.orangeAbove (default 200k)
• orange (colors.orange) while above that and at or below thresholds.redAbove (default 500k)
• red (colors.red) above thresholds.redAbove

The Claude subscription usage percentages use the same three colors, keyed on 70% and 90%.

After compaction, when the exact token count is briefly unknown, the widget renders ?% ░░░░░░░░░░░░ (?/1.0M).

Claude subscription usage

When you use an Anthropic model through an OAuth subscription (Claude Pro/Max via /login), Anthropic returns rate-limit headers that this extension reads via the after_provider_response event. It shows the session window (S, roughly a 5-hour rolling limit) and the weekly window (W), each with the percentage of the allowance consumed and a compact time until reset. With a raw API key or a non-Anthropic model these headers are absent and the segment is hidden. Disable it with showClaudeUsage: false.

Install

From the pi package catalog:

pi install npm:pi-dumb-zone

Or from the git repo:

pi install git:github.com/stylesuxx/pi-dumb-zone

Commands

• /dumbzone toggles the footer on and off (restores the built-in footer when off).
• /dumbzone-reload re-reads the config file from disk.

Configuration

Configuration layers, lowest to highest precedence:

1. Built-in defaults.
2. Global: ~/.pi/agent/dumbzone.json.
3. Project: .pi/dumbzone.json (only when the project is trusted).

All fields are optional; missing fields fall back to the defaults. See dumbzone.example.json.

| Field | Type | Default | Meaning | |-------|------|---------|---------| | thresholds.orangeAbove | number | 200000 | Absolute tokens above which the bar turns orange. | | thresholds.redAbove | number | 500000 | Absolute tokens above which the bar turns red. | | colors.green | hex | #3fb950 | Color for the low (green) state. | | colors.orange | hex | #d29922 | Color for the medium (orange) state. | | colors.red | hex | #f85149 | Color for the high (red) state. | | barWidth | number | 12 | Number of cells in the progress bar. | | showModel | boolean | true | Show the active model name on the right. | | showClaudeUsage | boolean | true | Show Anthropic subscription session/weekly usage when available. | | filledChar | string | █ | Character for filled bar cells. | | emptyChar | string | ░ | Character for empty bar cells. |

The three state colors are 6-digit hex, rendered as 24-bit ANSI. Labels, paths, cost, and other dim text still come from the active pi theme; only the green/orange/red states are fixed hex so they stay legible across themes.

Notes

The footer only renders in interactive TUI mode. In print, JSON, and RPC modes the extension is a no-op.

Development

The pure logic (config, colors, formatting, header parsing, rendering) lives in core.ts with no pi-runtime imports, so it is unit-tested in isolation. index.ts is the thin runtime glue.

npm install
npm test        # node:test suite over core.ts
npm run typecheck