pi-comfy-ui

Comfortable spacing and panel styling for Pi's interactive TUI.

Install

pi install npm:pi-comfy-ui

Project-local install only:

pi install -l npm:pi-comfy-ui

Then restart Pi, or run /reload if Pi is already open.

Configure

The package defaults to comfortable internal padding without modifying global settings:

{
  "editorPaddingX": 1,
  "contentPaddingX": 1
}

Override either value in Pi settings when you want different spacing:

• Global/user settings: ~/.pi/agent/settings.json

• Project/local settings: .pi/settings.json (overrides global)

• editorPaddingX is Pi's native inner input/editor padding. If unset, this package uses 1 internally for its custom editor.

• contentPaddingX is this package's outer layout padding for transcript, widgets, footer, and input panel alignment. If unset, this package uses 1 internally.

• The input/editor background is painted from the active theme token customMessageBg.

• Interactive prompt panels, such as settings, model selection, confirms, selects, and structured questions, are painted from the active theme token userMessageBg.

• The input/editor keeps Pi's original editor border color, but renders that border on the left and right sides only; Pi's native top/bottom editor border is hidden.

• Interactive prompt panels keep Pi's original border line color, but replace the top/bottom border shape with left/right side rails.

Supported aliases for outer layout padding:

• contentPaddingX
• layoutPaddingX
• PI_CONTENT_PADDING_X environment variable

The extension clamps editor and content padding to safe ranges and reduces content padding automatically on narrow terminals.

How it works

Pi does not currently expose a public root-layout wrapper hook for extensions. This package uses a narrow monkey patch on root TUI.render() to apply outer padding to the rendered frame.

This keeps the change package-local, avoids editing the globally installed Pi files, and keeps Pi's native editorPaddingX responsible for input padding.

The input background uses Pi's theme palette through customMessageBg; there is no separate extension color setting. Interactive prompt panel backgrounds use userMessageBg. In both cases, pi-comfy-ui preserves the original border color and only changes the border shape plus the painted background.

Because this extension monkey-patches shared TUI rendering, it may conflict with another extension that patches the same method. The patch is guarded with a global Symbol to avoid double-patching itself.

contentPaddingX is an outer margin. editorPaddingX remains the inner padding inside the input panel.