pi-nocchio

A tiny Pi package that adds a CLI flag for printing Pi's assembled system prompt.

What it does

pi-nocchio registers:

--dump-system-prompt

When the flag is present, Pi prints the turn-accurate assembled system prompt to stdout and exits before calling the model.

Install

pi install npm:@robzolkos/pi-nocchio

You can also try it directly from GitHub:

pi -e git:github.com/robzolkos/pi-nocchio --dump-system-prompt

Usage

Print the assembled system prompt for a dump turn:

pi --dump-system-prompt

Save it to a file:

pi --dump-system-prompt > system-prompt.txt

You can also provide your own initial prompt text:

pi --dump-system-prompt -p "dump" > system-prompt.txt

If no prompt is provided, pi-nocchio runs an internal synthetic -p "dump" turn so Pi still runs turn-scoped hooks like before_agent_start. The synthetic turn exits before any model request.

Notes

• The flag exits before any model request is made.
• When --dump-system-prompt is not used, the extension only performs cheap flag checks in event hooks; practical performance impact is negligible.
• Output is captured while Pi builds the request context, after the full before_agent_start chain, so turn-scoped system-prompt changes from other extensions are included.
• If no prompt is provided, pi-nocchio runs a synthetic dump turn internally instead of printing a misleading startup-only prompt.
• The output includes Pi's loaded tools, context files, skills, custom system prompt, appended system prompt, current date, and current working directory as Pi assembles them.
• This prints Pi's system prompt string. It does not include later provider-payload rewrites from before_provider_request hooks.

License

MIT