pi-read-mode

Scroll through conversation history while composing a follow-up message. Solves the problem where typing in pi's composer snaps the terminal back to the bottom, losing your scroll position.

Install

pi install npm:pi-read-mode

Or via git:

pi install git:github.com/minghinmatthewlam/pi-read-mode

Features

• Scroll + compose simultaneously — read the agent's response while typing your follow-up
• Pixel-perfect rendering — captures pi's actual rendered output, not a reconstruction
• Keyboard scrolling — arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home/End
• Mouse/trackpad scrolling — scroll wheel works in the viewport
• Paste support — text paste and image-to-filepath paste (via Ghostty/iTerm2)
• Composer at bottom — single-line input with Emacs-style editing

Usage

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Alt+R | Enter read mode | | /read | Enter read mode (slash command) | | Up / Down | Scroll one line | | Page Up / Page Down | Scroll one page | | Home / End | Jump to top / bottom | | Enter | Send follow-up message | | Escape | Cancel and exit |

Read mode is available when the agent is idle. It captures the current conversation display and shows it in a scrollable viewport with a pinned composer.

How it works

When you enter read mode, the extension captures pi's already-rendered TUI component tree by calling render(width) on the existing children. This produces the exact same ANSI-styled lines pi normally displays — no markdown reconstruction or custom rendering. The captured output is shown in a scrollable viewport with a composer pinned at the bottom. On terminal resize, components are re-rendered at the new width.

License

MIT