pi-duration

A Pi extension that adds timestamp and duration markers to the interactive transcript and shows a live elapsed-time counter in Pi's standard footer while the agent is working.

For each accepted request, the extension records:

• the local wall-clock time when work starts;
• the local wall-clock time when Pi fully settles; and
• the elapsed duration measured with a monotonic clock.

The transcript markers are right-aligned and dimmed. While work is active, the footer shows a matching ⧖ timer that updates once per second. The timer runs through tool calls, automatic retries, compaction retries, and queued continuations until Pi emits its final agent_settled event.

Timing data is stored as custom session entries. It survives reloads and resumes, renders in the TUI, and is never added to model context.

Installation

Install the published package from npm (recommended):

pi install npm:pi-duration

Alternatively, install the latest source directly from GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/amnn/pi-duration

To install from a local checkout:

git clone https://github.com/amnn/pi-duration.git
cd pi-duration
pnpm install
pi install .

Confirm the installation with pi list. After installing an update or changing a local checkout, run /reload in Pi or restart it.

Behavior

The start marker is appended when the first assistant message for the request begins. The settled marker includes the elapsed duration and ending wall-clock time.

Narrow terminals retain the rightmost portion of transcript markers so the clock remains visible. The active timer decorates the first line of Pi's standard footer, truncating its existing content as needed; when the timer cannot fit, it is omitted. Settled transcript markers show sub-minute durations in tenths of a second and longer durations in compact whole-second units. The live footer timer uses whole-second units throughout.

Elapsed time uses performance.now() so system clock adjustments do not distort the duration. Wall-clock labels use the machine's local 24-hour time.

Compatibility

The extension preserves Pi's standard footer by wrapping FooterComponent. Because Pi supports only one custom footer at a time, another extension that calls setFooter after pi-duration will replace it, and loading pi-duration after another custom-footer extension will replace that footer.

The footer and transcript renderers are TUI features. The timing entries may still be recorded in other Pi modes, but those modes do not display them.

Development

Development requires Node.js 22.19 or newer and pnpm. The repository's packageManager field pins the pnpm version and lets pnpm download it when necessary.

pnpm install
pnpm check

The full check verifies formatting, type-checks the package, runs unit tests, smoke-tests extension loading without a model request, and audits dependencies. To check or apply formatting separately:

pnpm format:check
pnpm format

Publishing

prepublishOnly runs the full check before a local publish:

pnpm publish --access public

The release workflow can publish with npm provenance and trusted publishing. Bump package.json and pnpm-lock.yaml, then push a tag exactly matching the package version (for example, v0.1.0). The workflow rejects mismatched tags.

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.