pi-interlude

Ever had a nice prompt prepared and the agent comes back with a question, or you need to check something before continuing? Deleting the draft is wasted effort, copy/pasting to make space for the interlude prompt is cumbersome. zsh has this fantastic stash command - Esc-q - that allows you to temporarily remove the current command and it will restore it after your interlude command is finished. pi-interlude brings this to pi. Install it, reload, enter something, press Ctrl-x, enter something else, send it, and watch with awe as your previous prompt reappears 🎉.

A pi extension that lets you stash the current draft, send a one-off interlude message, and then restore the original draft.

Install

Option 1: Install from npm (recommended)

pi install npm:@mjakl/pi-interlude

Option 2: Install via git

pi install git:github.com/mjakl/pi-interlude

Option 3: Install local package

pi install ./

What it does

1. Press the interlude shortcut
2. Your current editor text is stashed and the input box is cleared
3. Type and send a temporary message, or use one of the supported slash commands below
4. Your previous draft is restored into the editor

Press the shortcut again before sending to restore the stashed draft manually.

Slash command support

Auto-restore currently works for:

• /compact
• /model

For other slash commands, the stash stays armed. You can restore it manually by pressing the interlude shortcut again.

Note: the extension currently stashes editor text only. If your draft includes attachments, those are not restored.

Default shortcuts

• f6
• ctrl+x

f6 is the robust default. ctrl+x is the default secondary shortcut, nice mnemonics like ctrl+i (interlude) or ctrl-s (stash) are already taken or interfere with system keybindings.

Resolving the ctrl+x startup warning

Newer pi versions also bind ctrl+x to the built-in app.models.clearAll action in the scoped models selector. If pi reports an extension shortcut conflict for ctrl+x, we recommend removing or rebinding that built-in keybinding in your pi config rather than changing pi-interlude's defaults. This avoids a breaking change for existing pi-interlude users who already rely on ctrl+x.

Add this to ~/.pi/agent/keybindings.json to remove the built-in binding:

{
  "app.models.clearAll": []
}

If you still want a shortcut for clearing models in the scoped models selector, rebind it to another key instead (note: Shift isn't recognized by all terminal setups):

{
  "app.models.clearAll": "ctrl+shift+x"
}

If you already have a keybindings.json, merge the setting into the existing object. After changing keybindings.json, run /reload in pi or restart pi.

Configuration

The extension reads a custom interlude key from pi's existing keybindings file:

• ~/.pi/agent/keybindings.json

Example:

{
  "interlude": ["f6", "ctrl+x"]
}

Single shortcut example:

{
  "interlude": "f6"
}

If interlude is not set, the extension defaults to f6 and ctrl+x.

After changing keybindings.json, run /reload in pi.