Pi for VS Code

Run pi coding agent sessions in VS Code. Each session is a real terminal in a tab inside the Secondary Side Bar, with a session list beside it.

Install from the VS Code Marketplace.

Highlights

• Live status per session. Each entry shows what Pi is doing: a spinning blue glyph while it works, green when it is waiting for your input, gray when it is stopped. No need to keep a terminal in view to know whether the agent is still going.
• Click paths to open files. ⌘-click (Ctrl on Windows/Linux) any path Pi prints and it opens in the editor at the right line and column. Paths like src/file.ts:12:3 and paths wrapped across two terminal rows work; copying wrapped text yields the path on a single line.
• Session management. Browse every session for the current workspace in the list, grouped by Today / Yesterday / Last 7 Days / Last 30 Days / Older / Archive. Resume, archive, close, or delete sessions from the list or the terminal tab's context menu. Open tabs are remembered per workspace and reopened next time.
• Fork and rewind sessions. Right-click a session and pick Fork or Rewind to branch from, or go back to, any earlier user message. Fork opens the copy in a new tab; Rewind rewinds the session and restarts Pi with the message ready to re-send. Both are disabled while Pi is working. Rewind can also restore files to the state captured before the message — the checkpoint is a Git object in the transcript and never touches the real index; restoring files requires a Git repository.
• Audio cue. A short tone plays when a session goes from working to waiting — so you can start a task, switch away, and get told when it is done or needs input.
• Agent panels (opt-in). With the companion Pi package installed, a Pi session can spawn sibling Pi sessions in background tabs and drive them — prompt, wait for completion, list — so one orchestrator can fan reviews out to parallel agents and run fix/verify loops. See Agent panels.

Session list

• One entry per session, newest first. The title is the latest session_info.name from the session's JSONL transcript; sessions without one show New Session.
• Click an entry to focus its open terminal, or to resume it from disk (pi --session <file>) if it is not running.
• Hover a session to see when it was last used and to Archive it. Archiving moves the entry to the Archive group and closes its tab; Pi keeps running. The same button restores it.
• Delete asks for confirmation, then stops Pi, closes the tab, and erases the transcript and sidecar directory from ~/.pi/agent/sessions/--<cwd>--/.
• Long groups collapse behind More; each group name collapses on click.
• Below ~460px the view scrolls sideways instead of dropping the list. Hide the list with the pane toggle to give Pi the full width.

Terminal

• One xterm.js terminal per open session, with tabs, a + button, and an overflow menu in the header.
• The header also has Customize (Pi settings), Refresh, and the pane toggle.
• Close (tab ×, context menu, or ⌘W / Ctrl+F4 / Ctrl+W) hides the tab but leaves Pi running — the session keeps its live status and reopening it restores the scrollback. With no tab open, the shortcut closes the whole side bar.
• Stop Pi ends the process and closes the tab. The session stays listed and can be resumed.
• A tab closes itself when its Pi process exits; a non-zero exit shows a warning notification.
• Hold ⌘ (macOS) or Ctrl (Windows/Linux) and click a file path or HTTP(S) URL to open it. Source locations such as src/file.ts:12:3 are honored.

Companion Pi packages

Two optional pi packages extend what Pi sessions can do inside this extension. Each is installed separately, loads in every Pi session, and acts only in sessions started by this extension — in plain terminals they stay inert.

• pi-vscode-fork — pi install npm:pi-vscode-fork. Adds the /fork-with-vscode command: fork the conversation from any earlier user message into a new session tab.
• pi-vscode-panels — pi install npm:pi-vscode-panels, or pi install ./plugins/panels from a repo checkout. Adds panel orchestration tools (below) and the pi-panels skill.

Agent panels

With pi-vscode-panels installed, every Pi session gets four tools: panel_create (open a sibling Pi in a background tab, optionally with a chosen model, answered once it is ready), panel_prompt (submit a prompt to it), panel_wait (block until it goes idle — or pass tabIds to wait for a whole batch — with stall detection), and panel_list (all sessions with their state). The extension host listens for panel requests on the status socket whether or not the package is installed.

Panels share the workspace filesystem, so agents exchange briefs and results through files — e.g. parallel reviewers each writing review/<topic>/<name>.md, an orchestrator merging them, a fixer and a verifier looping until clean. The package also bundles the pi-panels skill, a ready-made playbook for that review → human check → fix → verify workflow.

Use

1. Install and authenticate pi so pi --version works in VS Code's environment.
2. Open a folder in VS Code.
3. Click the Pi terminal icon in the editor's top-right toolbar (next to Run), or run Pi: Open from the Command Palette.

Pi opens in the Secondary Side Bar, reopens the sessions that were open for that folder last time, and offers New session / + to start one.

Configuration

Setting	Default	Description
piAgent.command	pi	Executable name or absolute path used to start pi. Leave it as pi to auto-detect, including npm's pi.cmd shim on Windows; set an absolute path when detection cannot find it. It is an executable path, not a command line with arguments.

If pi cannot be found (for example on Windows, where npm installs a pi.cmd shim that VS Code must launch through cmd.exe), the extension looks it up in PATH and in npm's global directory, then asks you to browse for or type the executable path. The choice is saved to piAgent.command.

{
  "piAgent.command": "/absolute/path/to/pi"
}

Develop

npm install
npm test
npm run package

npm run package increments the patch version before creating the VSIX. Use Run Extension in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host.