pi-compact-thinking

A Pi extension that replaces the built-in Thinking blocks: hidden renderer with a compact, animated thinking preview.

Take a look

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/7c4b2194-501f-4194-9d4e-aac2aa937d0b

Installation

pi install npm:pi-compact-thinking

Restart Pi after installation.

Compatibility

Tested with Pi 0.80.10.

This extension monkey-patches Pi's internal assistant-message renderer. Internal UI APIs may change in future Pi releases, so the extension may require updates after upgrading Pi.

Configuration

The configuration file is created automatically the first time the extension loads. Its location is:

• $PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR/compact-thinking.json, when PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR is set; otherwise
• ~/.pi/agent/compact-thinking.json.

{
  "useSummaryTitlesAsThinkingTitle": true,
  "previewLines": 3,
  "animationIntervalMs": 90
}

• useSummaryTitlesAsThinkingTitle: For OpenAI models, uses the latest reasoning-summary heading as the live compact thinking title.
• previewLines: Maximum number of rendered reasoning-preview lines to retain in Thinking blocks: hidden mode. Set to 0 to hide the preview.
• animationIntervalMs: Interval, in milliseconds, between animation frames while the model is reasoning.

It is also recommended to set hideThinkingBlock to true in Pi's settings to enable compact thinking by default.

Restart Pi or reload the extension after changing the configuration.