v0.3.0

Added

• Optional HerdR execution backend with geometry-aware, serialized pane spawning, durable resume steering, and parent-owned cleanup.
• PI_TASK_BACKEND=auto|herdr|tmux|sdk.

Changed

• Task titles now include a gear prefix, for example ⚙ reviewer.
• Task completion is persisted before terminal cleanup.

Fixed

• HerdR steering submits exactly one Enter.
• HerdR lifecycle cleanup no longer races parent completion polling.
• Internal dead-code and dependency checks are clean.

See CHANGELOG.md for details.

v0.2.6

Non-tmux SDK task widgets

• Update task widgets only when task state changes rather than repainting continuously.
• Keep SDK background task rows visible until their own SDK settlement.
• Preserve tool invocation details and display the most recent SDK tool call.
• Provide structured foreground SDK results with expand/collapse parity.
• Preserve tmux foreground tool-stat polling.

Verification

• npm test
• npm run build
• TypeScript diagnostics
• Packed artifact inspected

npm publication is intentionally not included in this release.

v0.2.5

pi-task v0.2.5

Highlights

• One-tool orchestration: task guidance is stricter and clearer — prompt contract now explicitly requires goal, non-goals, write/read policy, stop condition, and verification recipe.
• Cleaner task receipts: foreground textual progress and background launch receipts now both show the exact subagent JSONL path, without noisy tmux/session-name boilerplate.
• Cleaner widgets: foreground and background widgets both use a compact header + tree-detail layout, with collapsed (+N more) tool-call summaries and aligned spacing.
• Harness cleanup: removed stale harness references and dead foreground-progress data plumbing so the extension is cleaner around its single-tool design.
• Tests: widget regression coverage is now part of the main npm test run.

Upgrade

pi install @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-task@0.2.5
# or link local: pi extensions link ~/dev/projects/pi-task

Requires peer @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent ^0.80.0.

pi-task v0.2.4

pi-task v0.2.4

Highlights

• Reliable background polling: prevents overlapping poll ticks from completing the same background task twice, and reads subagent JSONL from sessions/<taskId> consistently.
• Better failure diagnostics: when a tmux subagent exits without a result, the parent report now includes the expected session directory, JSONL presence, and pane tail when available.
• Safer subagent startup: PI_TASK_CHILD_NO_EXTENSIONS=1 runs child Pi sessions with --no-extensions for debugging extension-load crashes.
• Cleaner task UI: shared task title renderer keeps running and completed task titles consistent; completion notifications use the theme toolSuccessBg background.
• Tests: polling concurrency regression, failure diagnostics coverage, and render hint expectations updated.

Upgrade

pi install @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-task@0.2.4
# or link local: pi extensions link ~/dev/projects/pi-task

Requires peer @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent ^0.80.0.

v0.2.3 - task roster, delegation UI, workspace scope

0.2.3 — 2026-07-02

Highlights

• Task roster: bundled agents explore, scout, general, reviewer (removed worker / planner / vision). YAML hidden, proactive, readonly; dynamic task catalog + preflight.
• Workspace scope in delegated prompts; parent hint to pass absolute repo paths when cwd ≠ target.
• Foreground: sticky header (toolTitle agent, text tool count while running, success duration); description until live stats; readProgress(sessionDir); overlap caps.
• Background + results: shared result body — muted toolcalls • success duration on completed results; one collapsed ⎿ line; task-complete title aligned with sticky; dim ) on expand hint.
• Tests: prompt, frontmatter, renderHint; smoke peer pi version check.

Upgrade

pi install @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-task@0.2.3
# or link local: pi extensions link ~/dev/projects/pi-task

Requires peer @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent ^0.80.0.

v0.2.2 — structured task UI & background parity

@heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-task v0.2.2

Structured scout/task output in the TUI, foreground Ctrl+O, and background completion parity.

Highlights

• Ctrl+O on finished tasks shows Summary / Findings / Evidence / Files / Caveats / Next steps when the subagent returns XML (canonical <result> or agent <episode> aliases).
• Background tasks use the same renderer on task-complete notifications; start receipt is a plain ⎿ Started task… block (no <task> XML dump).
• Episode alias parsing: sources → evidence, blockers → caveats, checks → next_steps, decisions → findings.
• Fix: task-complete no longer crashes the TUI (Text.trim on rendered array).

Install

pi install npm:@heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-task@0.2.2

Pair with updated .pi/agents/*.md <result> envelopes for best results.

Verify

npm run build && npm test

v0.2.1

Added

• background: true support for SDK backend. The Pi task tool now accepts background: true when running inside the SDK (non-tmux backend). The subagent's AgentSession lives in the host's process; its subscriptions and extension context stay valid as long as the parent session is alive, which is what OpenPi's sidecar guarantees.
• stale-ctx filtering. extension_error events that come from a Promise rejection whose message mentions "this extension ctx is stale" are now swallowed before the UI sees them. The host's session-replacement path was triggering a benign race during reload.
• Task-session-history helpers. New .pi/task-session-history.json is the source of truth for runtime task status. The renderer no longer reads TASKS.md for status or navigation.
• Cancelled foreground navigation is normalized. A click on a pending task row no longer aborts the running child; the row stays unclickable until the task settles.

Fixed

• reload_session no longer leaks extension timers. The sidecar now does a full session replacement (dispose + startSession) on reload, which atomically destroys the old runner and its timers.
• Background tmux panes self-destruct on exit. Pane remain-on-exit and setPaneSelfDestruct are set so dead tasks don't accumulate.
• Restore reconciles registry with JSONL. On startup, restoreActiveBackgroundTasks walks the registry and the per-task JSONL, marking tasks done/failed and killing stale panes.

32 commits since v0.2.0. See CHANGELOG.md for the full release notes.

v0.2.0

v0.2.0

Demo

▶ 89s background-task walkthrough (MP4)

Spawning a background subagent in a tmux pane, watching live tool-call progress in the parent pane, reading the final result via the session JSONL.

Changed

• Modular refactor of src/. The single-file index.ts is now a thin wiring layer; the implementation is split across focused modules:
  • src/tool/ — renderCall, renderResult, taskComplete, prompt, schema.
  • src/lifecycle/ — polling, completion, toolStats, widget, restore.
  • src/subagent/ — buildArgv, runSdk, tmux, waitCompletion.
  • src/conversation.ts — findJsonlSessionByName, registry and task-session-history helpers.
  • src/constants.ts — BACKGROUND_CHECK_MS, COUNT_POLL_MS, TASK_TIMEOUT_MS, MAX_POLL_ERRORS.
  • src/types.ts — BackgroundTask, RegistryEntry, TaskSessionHistoryEntry, TaskDetails.
• Session JSONL is now the single source of truth for task results. RESULT.md is no longer read for completion detection or result text — the final assistant message in ~/.pi/agent/sessions/.../<id>.jsonl is the authoritative result. This removes mid-write EACCES and "stale truncated RESULT.md" failure modes entirely.
• Completion detection is gated on stopReason. hasAgentFinished() in src/session-text.ts only treats an assistant message as final when its stopReason is stop, endTurn, length, error, or aborted. toolUse mid-turn streaming text is correctly ignored.
• Background polling is hardened. checkInFlight guard prevents overlapping poll ticks. MAX_POLL_ERRORS = 3 per-task counter absorbs transient filesystem errors. Try/catch around checkTaskCompletion() keeps the interval alive on one-off failures.
• Reordered completion check flow. Session JSONL is consulted before pane liveness, so remain-on-exit panes no longer block detection.

Added

• renderCall / renderResult / task-complete renderers with Ctrl+O expand/collapse (via keyHint("app.tools.expand")) on the task tool. Foreground results show stats + preview; expanded shows the full result text. The keybinding hint falls back to Ctrl+O if the app.tools.expand keybinding is not registered.
• Foreground real-time tool-call progress. The foreground execute path now polls the session file and emits _onUpdate callbacks while waiting, so the parent pane shows a live ${n} tool calls count alongside the spawned subagent pane.

Fixed

• Duplicate "scout - Description" / "scout — Description" header in foreground results: renderResult no longer re-renders the header that renderCall already rendered.
• The ( to expand) empty-keybinding hint: now falls back to a plain Ctrl+O to expand label when keyText("app.tools.expand") is empty.

Verified

• npm run typecheck passes
• npm run build passes
• npm run smoke passes
• npm pack --dry-run succeeds (115.5 kB tarball, 61 files)

v0.1.6

0.1.6

What changed

• Per-task data lives in flat files at the top of .pi/artifacts/.
  No per-task subdirs, no <task-id> paths.
• The subagent's session is auto-saved by pi at
  ~/.pi/agent/sessions/<cwd>/<session-id>.jsonl. pi-task does not
  maintain its own session storage.
• Task widget rendering is now split into a dedicated module for easier
  maintenance.
• Foreground and background widgets now use consistent colors for
  duration/tool-call stats.
• Background completion results now use a padded themed main-pane block
  and no longer duplicate completed-widget notifications.
• Final foreground tool-call counts now match the live widget count.

Layout

.pi/artifacts/
├── TODO.md              pikit canonical (untouched)
├── PLAN.md              pikit canonical (untouched)
├── PROGRESS.md          pikit canonical (untouched)
├── DECISIONS.md         pikit canonical (untouched)
├── TASKS.md             pi-task: all task data, ### blocks per task
└── task-sessions.json   pi-task: conversation_id → { task_id, session_file }

No .pi/task-runs/. No .pi/artifacts/task-<id>/ subdirs. No
CONTEXT.md (the prompt is in the CLI arg). No SESSION.md. No
RESULT.md (the subagent's final assistant message IS the result;
pi-task reads it from the auto-saved session file).

How it works

1. Parent launches pi --name <task_id> "<prompt>" in a tmux pane
   (interactive TUI) — or pi --mode json if tmux is unavailable
2. Subagent works, user watches (in tmux mode)
3. Subagent's final assistant message IS the result. The prompt
   tells the subagent to end with a clear summary.
4. Parent reads the last assistant message from the auto-saved
   session file (tmux mode) or from the JSON event stream (SDK mode)
5. Parent embeds the result in TASKS.md as a #### Result block
6. Parent updates task-sessions.json with the session file path
7. For resume, parent uses pi --session <session_file> to continue

v0.1.5

• Add durable subagent conversation_id to the task tool.
• Reuse existing .pi/artifacts/task-/ layout; new files: SESSION.md and metadata.json.
• Persist conversation_id -> task- mapping under .pi/artifacts/task-conversations.json.
• Add /task-sessions command to list durable conversations.
• Durable conversation resume requires the tmux/CLI backend.
• Refactor conversation helpers into src/conversation.ts.
• Add unit tests for conversation artifact naming/validation/session card.