pi-extension-too-dumb

A pi coding agent extension that warns when the model's reasoning ability is likely to be compromised.

AKA when it's getting too dumb, and you should bail.

It does this mainly by displaying a banner that says "YOU ARE IN THE DUMB ZONE".

When you get this banner, it's probably time to /compact or /new.

Signals

Signal	Orange	Red
Context window fill	> 70%	> 90%
Context fill rate	On pace to hit 70% in ~4 turns	—
Cache efficiency	Reuse < 30%	Reuse < 10%
1M context window reasoning threshold	90k	120k

Controlling the display

The banner and toasts can be toggled per session with the /too-dumb command:

/too-dumb display off   # hide banner + toasts (signals still emit on the bus)
/too-dumb display on    # show them again
/too-dumb               # or: /too-dumb status — report current state + warning

Turning the display off never stops signal production — it only stops too-dumb from drawing its own UI. This is what you want if another extension or theme is rendering the dumbness signal natively.

Consuming the signal from another extension

too-dumb broadcasts its signal on pi's shared event bus so other extensions and themes can react to it and render it however they like. This happens independently of the banner — the event fires even when the banner is turned off with /too-dumb display off.

The event is called too-dumb:change.

To consume it, call pi.events.on("too-dumb:change", handler) in your own extension. Your handler receives one argument — the payload described below:

import type { ExtensionAPI } from "@earendil-works/pi-coding-agent";

export default function (pi: ExtensionAPI) {
  // "too-dumb:change" is the event name. The handler runs every time the
  // warning changes (including when it clears).
  pi.events.on("too-dumb:change", (data) => {
    const { warning, metrics } = data as TooDumbChange;

    if (warning === null) {
      // All clear — hide whatever you were showing.
      return;
    }

    // warning.severity is "orange" or "red"; warning.message is human-readable.
    // Render it in your own status bar / widget / theme however you want:
    myStatusBar.set(`⚠ ${warning.message}`, warning.severity);

    // metrics carries the raw numbers if you'd rather build your own UI:
    //   metrics.contextPercent, metrics.tokens, metrics.cacheRatio, …
  });
}

// The payload shape emitted on "too-dumb:change":
type TooDumbChange = {
  warning:
    | { severity: "orange" | "red"; message: string }
    | null; // null = no active warning ("all clear")
  metrics: {
    contextPercent: number | null;   // 0..100 context-window fill
    tokens: number | null;           // absolute token count
    contextWindow: number;           // window size used for the math
    cacheRatio: number | null;       // 0..1 cache reuse, or null when no data
    fillRatePerTurn: number | null;  // %-points/turn growth, or null
  };
};

If you have too-dumb installed as a dependency you can import the name constant and types instead of hand-writing them:

import { TOO_DUMB_EVENT, type TooDumbChange } from "pi-extension-too-dumb";
// TOO_DUMB_EVENT === "too-dumb:change"
pi.events.on(TOO_DUMB_EVENT, (data) => {
  const payload = data as TooDumbChange;
  // …
});

Reference

• Event name: too-dumb:change (exported as the constant TOO_DUMB_EVENT).
• Subscribe with: pi.events.on("too-dumb:change", (data) => …).
• Payload: TooDumbChange — { warning, metrics } (shape above).
• When it fires: only when the warning changes, including transitions back to null. Treat it as edge-triggered — no event means no change.
• Always emitted: fires regardless of the /too-dumb display setting, so consumers work even when too-dumb's own banner is hidden.

Install

pi install npm:pi-extension-too-dumb

Or project-local:

pi install -l npm:pi-extension-too-dumb