nine

Nine is a Neovim plugin that uses pi RPC mode to generate text to insert at the current cursor position or replacement text for a visual selection.

It is directly inspired by ThePrimeagen/99 and is my take on the idea using the more minimal pi coding agent.

Current behavior

Nine supports two workflows:

• Normal mode :Nine opens a floating prompt for text to insert at the cursor.
• Visual mode :'<,'>Nine opens the same prompt for rewriting the selected text.
• Neovim applies the returned text in a single buffer mutation.
• In visual mode, only the selected range is replaced; text around the selection is immutable context.

Requirements

• pi must be installed and available on $PATH
• Neovim with Lua support

Default config

It is not required to call setup, but if you want to modify the options, these are the defaults:

require("nine").setup({
  pi_cmd = "pi",
  pi_args = { "--mode", "rpc", "--no-session", "--tools", "read,grep,find,ls" },
})

Usage

For insertion, run:

:Nine

For visual replacement, select text and run:

:'<,'>Nine

Example Lua keymaps:

vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>nn", "<cmd>Nine<cr>", { desc = "nine insert" })
vim.keymap.set("x", "<leader>nn", ":Nine<cr>", { desc = "nine rewrite selection" })

Inside the prompt window:

• <C-d> submits in insert and normal mode
• <Esc> cancels in normal mode

Tests

Run the headless Neovim test suite:

./tests/run.sh

Test output is colored by default. Disable ANSI colors with:

NO_COLOR=1 ./tests/run.sh

Notes

• Nine keeps pi read-only for these workflows.
• Neovim is the only part that mutates the buffer.
• Insertions and replacements are applied with one nvim_buf_set_text() call so they land as a single undo step.

See plan.md for the v1 design.