pi-prompt-control

Manage and minimize Pi's system prompt — config-driven patches, interactive skill toggle, and probe-based prompt capture.

Install

pi install npm:pi-prompt-control

Features

/prompt-dump [path] — Capture the real system prompt

Fires a probe turn so every before_agent_start handler runs (pi-slim, your own extensions, anything). Captures the fully-chained system prompt in turn_start, writes it to a file, and aborts before the LLM call.

/prompt-dump                      # → ./pi-system-prompt-patched.md
/prompt-dump my-prompt.md         # → ./my-prompt.md

Works at fresh start — no prior message needed.

/skills — Interactive skill toggle

Opens a TUI checklist of every loaded skill. Toggle with Space. Unchecked skills are stripped from the system prompt before each turn, saving context tokens.

Skills remain explicitly invokable via /skill:<name> — only their automatic inclusion is toggled off.

/skills           # open the TUI checklist
/skills:reset     # re-enable all skills

State is persisted to:

• ~/.pi/agent/disabled-skills.json (user scope)
• .pi/disabled-skills.json (project scope, overrides user)

Config-driven patches — prompt-patches.json

Place a config file at .pi/prompt-patches.json (project) or ~/.pi/agent/prompt-patches.json (global):

{
  "patches": [
    {
      "name": "remove bash guidance",
      "op": "remove",
      "find": "- Use bash for file operations like ls, rg, find\n"
    },
    {
      "name": "soften a rule",
      "op": "replace",
      "find": "You must always",
      "replace": "Prefer to",
      "regex": false
    },
    {
      "name": "add house rule",
      "op": "append",
      "text": "\n\nPrefer rg over grep.\n"
    },
    {
      "name": "strip a block (regex)",
      "op": "replace",
      "find": "\\n\\nSome block[\\s\\S]*?end of block",
      "replace": "",
      "regex": true
    }
  ]
}

Patch operations

| op | Required fields | Description | |------|----------------|-------------| | remove | find | Remove the first occurrence of find | | replace | find, replace | Replace the first occurrence of find with replace | | append | text | Append text to the end of the prompt |

All remove and replace patches support "regex": true and an optional "flags" string (e.g. "gi").

Live reload

The config file is watched — edits take effect on the next message without /reload. Parse errors and validation issues are surfaced via notifications.

How /prompt-dump works

Unlike ctx.getSystemPrompt() (which returns the base prompt), /prompt-dump captures the prompt after all extensions have modified it:

1. Sets a capture flag
2. Sends a probe user message (.)
3. All before_agent_start handlers chain naturally
4. In turn_start, captures ctx.getSystemPrompt() (now fully chained)
5. Writes to file and calls ctx.abort() — no LLM call, no cost

This means it works with any combination of extensions (pi-slim, custom patches, skill-toggle, future extensions) without knowing about them.

Publish through GitHub Actions

This package publishes to npm through .github/workflows/publish.yml.

1. In npm, create a granular access token with publish access and 2FA bypass enabled.

2. In GitHub, add it as repository secret NPM_TOKEN.

3. Bump the package version:

   npm version patch
   git push --follow-tags

4. The workflow publishes when a v*.*.* tag is pushed, when a GitHub Release is published, or when run manually from the Actions tab.

The workflow runs npm pack --dry-run, skips versions that are already published, and publishes with npm provenance.

License

MIT