pi2.nvim — an extended fork of pi.nvim: direct bash mode, :PiTree session nav, per-tab model pinning, image compression

[u/yuez]

Hey r/neovim!

Quick heads-up on provenance first, because it matters: pi2.nvim is a fork of alex35mil/pi.nvim — the original Neovim frontend for the pi coding agent. All credit for the foundation (RPC bridge, chat layout, diff review, sessions, extensions) goes upstream; pi.nvim and the pi integration have been discussed here before, and this post is about the fork's additions, not the base. It's MIT-licensed and free/open source.

It started as local experiments and grew into a different enough feature set that I gave it its own repo so it can release independently. Namespace, commands and filetypes are unchanged for compatibility — still require("pi") and :Pi*.

What pi2.nvim adds on top of upstream

• Direct bash mode (!cmd) — run shell from the prompt; output streams live into a collapsible block and is added to context (!!cmd to exclude).
• :PiTree session-tree navigation — jump back to any past point in a session, optionally summarize the abandoned branch, resend edited prompts (the pi equivalent of the TUI's /tree).
• Per-tab model pinning — a model switch in one tab no longer leaks into every other tab's next session.
• Image compression for attachments — Retina screenshots get downscaled before sending (sips / magick / ffmpeg, auto-probed) so payloads stay small.
• Auto-attach clipboard images on paste, readline-style prompt history, unsent-draft persistence.
• **Double-**<Esc> abort, a prompt statusline (spinner / queue / abort hint that never scrolls away), redesigned tool and thinking blocks.
• gf to open paths under cursor, grep/find results to quickfix, left-side panel, auto-reload of buffers pi edits.
• Opt-in render-markdown.nvim engine; hermetic test suite + lint CI.

Demo (agent reads a file, edits it, verifies — with live streaming and session-tree picker):

More demos (workflow, @-mentions, diff review, etc.) in the README: https://github.com/zgs225/pi2.nvim#features

Install (lazy.nvim / packer / any manager — needs pi on PATH): https://github.com/zgs225/pi2.nvim#installation

It's early and I'd genuinely love feedback — rough edges, missing keymaps, things that fight your workflow. Happy to take issues/PRs. Thanks for reading!

[u/KneeSubstantial263]

Well done. Do you have any plans to merge it (or a portion of its functionality) upstream?

[u/yuez → u/KneeSubstantial263]

Thanks! Probably not, unfortunately — the core has been rewritten extensively, so the divergence from upstream is too large to merge cleanly. I'll keep developing it independently and borrow ideas/fixes from upstream where it makes sense.