pi-quiver

Ground-truth ingestion for the Pi coding agent: pull real web pages, docs, and local files into context without flooding it.

The problem

Reasoning from a model's training memory instead of the real page, the current docs, or the actual PDF is how agents confidently ship wrong answers about APIs that changed last month. Mature engineering work has to be data-driven - the agent needs to read the real source.

But the moment an agent does that, one fetch or PDF read can dump hundreds of kilobytes of boilerplate into context, degrading every turn after it.

Why pi-quiver exists

fetch and doc_to_md bring real web pages, GitHub issues/PRs, and local PDF/DOCX/PPTX files into context - and every result is size-gated by construction: over 32 KB or 1000 lines spills to a temp file with a preview and a grep/read hint, so a single call can never flood the window. Ingestion is what makes data-driven work possible; the gate is what keeps it safe.

session-name and sword-header are smaller, opt-in ergonomics on top - session labeling and a themed startup header.

Part of the pi agent toolkit

Four independent extensions for the pi coding agent, each owning one concern of running agents seriously:

• pi-quiver - capabilities (fetch, doc conversion, session tools)
• pi-cohort - coordination (delegate to focused child agents)
• pi-condense - context economy (prune context, keep it recoverable)
• pi-gauntlet - process (the gated brainstorm->ship workflow)

No code dependency between them. pi-quiver is call-level: it gates the size of what comes in. pi-condense is loop-level: it prunes what's already in context once a tool call is done. Different problem, same discipline.

Mental model

Every extension here is context-safe by construction, not by convention: the size check runs on every call, there's no flag to forget. Two tools bring real sources in (fetch, doc_to_md); two are opt-in ergonomics (session-name, sword-header).

flowchart LR
    S[web page / PDF / doc] --> T["fetch / doc_to_md"]
    T --> E[extract main content]
    E --> G{"over 32KB or 1000 lines?"}
    G -->|no| I[return inline to context]
    G -->|yes| F[spill to temp file<br/>return preview + grep/read hint]

Quick example

pi install npm:pi-quiver

> fetch https://example.com/some-huge-changelog
Saved-To: /tmp/pi-fetch/2026-...-example.com-....md
60-line preview follows. grep '^#' the file for headings, or read a slice.

A 300 KB changelog page never touches your context window - you get a preview and a path.

Architecture

| Extension | Tool | What it does | | --- | --- | --- | | fetch.ts | fetch | Retrieve URLs over HTTP(S). HTML -> Markdown (Readability extraction, Turndown conversion). Binary saved untouched to a temp file. GitHub issue/PR/repo/actions-run URLs auto-route through gh (falls back to HTTP). Same size gate as doc_to_md. | | doc_to_md.ts | doc_to_md | Convert a local PDF/DOCX/PPTX to Markdown. High-fidelity via pymupdf4llm (run through uv); degraded pure-JS fallback (unpdf) when uv/Python is unavailable or conversion times out. DOCX/PPTX convert via LibreOffice first. | | session-name.ts | /session-name | Manual + opt-in automatic session naming, with Ghostty tab rename. OFF by default. | | sword-header.ts | /builtin-header | Themed ASCII startup header replacing pi's default logo. OFF by default. | | fast-mode.ts | /fast | Inject Anthropic fast-mode (speed: "fast" + anthropic-beta: fast-mode-2026-02-01) into every Claude Opus 4.8 request, any thinking level. --fast flag + /fast [on\|off\|status]. OFF by default. |

Full routing rules, size-gate mechanics, and config: doc/fetch.md, doc/doc-to-md.md.

Key concepts

| Concept | Meaning | | --- | --- | | Size gate | Text/Markdown/JSON output over 32 KB or 1000 lines spills to a temp file with a 60-line preview instead of inlining. | | Content routing | HTML -> Markdown, binary -> untouched file, GitHub URLs -> gh CLI, everything else -> the size gate. | | Graceful degradation | Optional binaries (gh, uv, LibreOffice) are never hard install-time deps; each has a defined, documented fallback or failure mode. | | Opt-in ergonomics | session-name and sword-header do nothing until explicitly enabled in settings.json. |

When to use

• An agent needs to reason from a real web page, GitHub issue/PR, or local PDF/DOCX/PPTX instead of memory.
• You want that ingestion to be safe by default, with no risk of a single call blowing the context budget.

When NOT to use

• You need a general-purpose web scraper (JS-rendered pages, pagination, auth flows) - fetch does plain HTTP + Readability extraction, nothing more.
• You need spreadsheet conversion - doc_to_md explicitly excludes spreadsheets (they paginate badly via PDF).
• You want automatic session naming or a custom header without opting in - both stay off until you flip the config.

Install

Published to npm as the unscoped pi-quiver package.

User scope (all repos under your pi profile):

pi install npm:pi-quiver

Project scope (current repo only, committable via .pi/settings.json):

pi install -l npm:pi-quiver

Try without installing:

pi -e npm:pi-quiver

From a local checkout (for hacking on the extensions):

git clone [email protected]:jjuraszek/pi-quiver.git ~/repos/pi-quiver
pi -e ~/repos/pi-quiver/fetch.ts

Prerequisites

The npm package's bundled JS deps install automatically on pi install. A few runtime system binaries are optional; each degrades gracefully when absent:

| Prerequisite | Needed by | If absent | | --- | --- | --- | | gh (GitHub CLI, installed + gh auth login) | fetch GitHub issue/PR/repo/actions-run routing | Falls back to an HTTP fetch of the rendered page (private repos hit a login wall). | | uv (+ managed Python 3.14, fetched on first use) | doc_to_md high-fidelity PDF conversion | Degrades to the pure-JS unpdf fallback (no faithful tables/headings). | | LibreOffice (soffice on PATH) | doc_to_md DOCX/PPTX conversion | Office inputs error (no JS fallback for office->PDF); PDFs unaffected. |

None is a hard install-time dependency of the package; they are tools you provide in the environment where pi runs.

Opt-in extension config

Both are opt-in via settings.json (project .pi/settings.json overrides the global agent-dir layer):

{
  "sessionAutoName": { "enabled": false, "ghosttyTab": true }, // or boolean shorthand
  "swordHeader": false,                                        // or { "enabled": true }
  "fastMode": false                                            // or { "enabled": true }
}

sessionAutoName.enabled makes one extra short LLM call per session (once, after the first turn) to title it; false (default) makes no model calls. fastMode only affects claude-opus-4-8 requests on Anthropic's anthropic-messages API; enabling it opts into premium fast-mode pricing. --fast forces it on for one launch; /fast on|off toggles live. Proxy providers (opencode, cloudflare-ai-gateway) are excluded. fastMode's header injection needs the before_provider_headers hook (pi bundling @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent >= 0.80.5); on older pi the beta header is silently not sent. See doc/fetch.md and doc/doc-to-md.md for the ingestion tools' full reference; session-name/sword-header behavior above is complete.

Development

Deps are peers (@earendil-works/*, @sinclair/typebox) plus the bundled runtime deps; install them transiently and run the full check:

npm install
npm run test:all      # node --test *.test.ts  +  tsc --noEmit typecheck

npm test runs the unit tests alone; npm run typecheck runs the type pass. Both run in CI on ubuntu + windows (.github/workflows/test.yml).

How this fits the platform

pi-quiver is how ground truth gets into an agent's context - real pages, PDFs, docs, cleanly and safely. The other three then coordinate work over it (pi-cohort), prune it once it's stale (pi-condense), and govern the process end to end (pi-gauntlet).

Support

If this saves you time, consider buying me a coffee.

Release

Published to npm by CI. Pushing a vX.Y.Z tag triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which gates on tag == package.json, runs npm run test:all, and publishes with npm publish --provenance --access public via OIDC trusted publishing. Never run npm publish by hand.

Cut a release with the helper script (also exposed as the /release prompt + the release skill at .agents/skills/release/):

bash .agents/skills/release/scripts/release.sh propose      # suggest a level
bash .agents/skills/release/scripts/release.sh patch        # or minor / major
bash .agents/skills/release/scripts/release.sh --dry-run patch

It bumps package.json, commits Release <version>, runs the tests, creates and pushes the vX.Y.Z tag, then monitors the publish. See .agents/skills/release/SKILL.md for the full flow (sync-presets migrates old git-tag pins to npm:pi-quiver@<version>).