PiChat

PiChat

Chat with the Pi coding agent inside Obsidian. Conversations render as native Obsidian markdown with full support for code highlighting, Mermaid diagrams, callouts, and wiki-links.

Desktop only. Requires Pi installed locally (npm i -g @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent).

System access: This plugin reads ~/.pi/agent/ (Pi's config directory) to discover providers, models, and session history. This requires accessing your home directory path via os.homedir().

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Features

Chat View

• Full streaming with live markdown rendering
• Thinking blocks (expandable, auto-collapses when response starts)
• Tool call results in collapsible details
• Native text selection for chat history
• Steering messages — send while the agent is working to redirect it
• Abort button to cancel mid-stream
• Image paste support (base64)
• File attachment via @ picker

Session Management

• Header bar — shows session name (click to rename), model, thinking level, and working directory
• Session sidebar — browse, search, switch, delete, and export Pi's native .jsonl sessions
• Message persistence — chat history survives session switches and plugin restarts
• Auto-save — conversations saved as markdown notes to your vault on close
• New Session button with auto-save of current conversation

Command Integration

• / in chat input opens a command picker with Pi's available commands
• Pi commands registered in Obsidian's command palette (Ctrl+P → Pi: /command-name)
• Commands grouped by source (skill, extension, prompt template)
• Commands re-fetched per connection (project-scoped)

Model Switching

• Pi: Switch model command to pick from available models
• Model and thinking level shown in header and status bar

Status Bar

• Session name, model, token usage, and cost at a glance
• Streaming indicator

Setup

1. Install Pi globally
2. Clone or download this repo
3. npm install && npm run build
4. Copy main.js, styles.css, and manifest.json to your vault's .obsidian/plugins/pi-plugin/
5. Enable "Pi" in Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins

Settings

Privacy & System Access

This plugin integrates with your existing Pi installation and needs access to:

These paths are resolved using os.homedir() to locate Pi's configuration directory. The plugin does not collect, transmit, or store any system identity information — it only uses these paths to read Pi's local config files.

Architecture

The plugin communicates with Pi via its RPC mode — spawns pi --mode rpc --no-session and exchanges JSON lines over stdin/stdout.

graph LR
    subgraph Obsidian
        View[Chat View]
        Header[Header Bar]
        Panel[Session Panel]
        Store[Message Store]
        Commands[Command Palette]
    end

    subgraph Pi Process
        RPC[RPC Server]
        LLM[LLM API]
        Tools[Tools]
        Sessions[Session Files<br/>.jsonl]
    end

    View -- JSON lines<br/>stdin/stdout --> RPC
    RPC -- streaming events --> View
    Panel -- scan .jsonl --> Sessions
    Store -. persist .-> View
    Commands -- get_commands --> RPC
    RPC --> LLM
    RPC --> Tools
    RPC --> Sessions

Key Modules

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # watch mode
npm run build  # production build with type checking

Build output is main.js in the repo root. Copy it (along with styles.css and manifest.json) to your vault's plugin directory to test.

License

MIT