@tian.zuo/pi-ask-user

Release notes: changelog · GitHub releases

Let the model ask you a multiple-choice question from pi.

Token-light by design. The entire model-facing surface — tool description, schema docs, and three guideline bullets — totals ≈560 characters. The most-downloaded alternative ask_user package (@eko24ive/pi-ask) spends ≈1,700 on its tool description and schema alone, and popular pi extensions generally run 2–3k (pi-mcp-adapter: ≈2.5k across 12 tools; pi-web-access: ≈3.2k on web_search alone). Same interactive form, a third of the prompt weight — the wording lives in one small lib/prompt.ts instead of prose sprayed through the schema.

pi install npm:@tian.zuo/pi-ask-user

Registers an ask_user tool. The model can supply 1–5 questions with 2–5 options each. Questions and option descriptions wrap across as many lines as needed instead of being truncated. Every question accepts one selection and also gets a free-form Other option. The model is instructed to order each question's options with its recommendation first, and the selected answer is marked with a → arrow — single-selection list style, not a checkbox. A model-supplied Other-style option is refused rather than shown twice: the duplicate would otherwise reach the user with nothing reporting it back.

Interactive controls:

• ← / → — switch questions while preserving answers
• ↑ / ↓ — move between options
• Space — select an option
• Enter — move to the next question or submit the completed form
• Esc — go back from the custom-answer editor or dismiss the form

While it waits for your answer, the tool reports the input requirement on pi's shared event bus (pi.events). This is pi's in-process mechanism for tool ↔ integration communication: an integration subscribes with pi.events.on(...), aggregates active requests into its own agent state, and bridges that state to its client.

The same versioned payload goes out on two channels. herdr:blocked is the one with a live consumer: Herdr's shipped pi integration (v8 in Herdr 0.9.0, still v9 upstream) subscribes to it, maps active/label onto the pane's blocked state, and owns the resulting status and needs-attention notification. agent:input_required mirrors that payload under a client-agnostic name for consumers that prefer one; nothing subscribes to it yet, so the two channels coexist rather than one deprecating the other. The stable id lets consumers correlate duplicate and concurrent requests:

{
  version: 1,
  id: string,        // ask_user tool-call ID
  source: "ask_user",
  active: boolean,   // true before waiting, false in finally
  label: string      // normalized question, always present
}

In the TUI, the form also reports blocked (kind=question, with the label as the message) through the terminal's OSC 7501 program status. Terminals such as Rex show it on the tab and the session picker. Pi reports blocked only for its built-in select/input/editor dialogs, not for ctx.ui.custom() forms, so the tool reports it itself. When the form closes, it restores the working status that Pi reported for the run. Pi writes nothing when the terminal does not support OSC 7501.

Pi's event bus has no "blocked" status (only working while a tool call is in flight vs idle), and can't distinguish an autonomous long-running tool from one waiting on a human. Pi 0.84.4+ emits its own ui_prompt_start / ui_prompt_end around ctx.ui prompts, but those carry no question label for custom forms — the shape this tool renders. Emitting is best-effort, balanced active→inactive via try/finally, and a harmless no-op when nothing listens. No event is emitted in non-UI modes.

See the collection repository for more extensions.

License

MIT © Tian Zuo