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

Setting	Default	Description
Pi binary path	pi	Path to the Pi executable
Working directory	vault root	Working directory for Pi
Default provider	(Pi default)	LLM provider (anthropic, openai, google, etc.)
Default model	(Pi default)	Model name
Session save directory	Pi-Sessions	Vault directory for saved conversations
Persist sessions	true	Auto-save conversations as vault notes
Thinking level	medium	Reasoning level (none, low, medium, high)

Privacy & System Access

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

Path	Purpose
~/.pi/agent/models.json	Discover available LLM providers and models
~/.pi/agent/sessions/	Browse and load your Pi conversation history
~/.pi/agent/prompts/	Custom prompt templates

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

File	Purpose
src/rpc.ts	Spawn Pi process, JSON line protocol, request/response correlation
src/view.ts	Chat view — header, messages, input, session panel integration
src/stream-handler.ts	Process RPC events into ChatMessages (text deltas, tool calls, thinking)
src/renderer.ts	Render messages as Obsidian markdown
src/session-scanner.ts	Read Pi's native .jsonl session files
src/session-panel.ts	Session browser sidebar
src/session-list.ts	Session list modal for browsing saved conversations
src/message-store.ts	Persistent message cache for session history
src/commands.ts	/ command suggest and palette registration
src/input.ts	Chat input with auto-resize, paste, attachments
src/sessions.ts	Save/load conversations as markdown vault notes
src/statusbar.ts	Status bar with model, tokens, cost
src/settings.ts	Plugin settings

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