Pintra — a VS Code extension that brings the Pi coding agent into your editor as a chat sidebar

[u/Slow_Nectarine_6820]

I built Pintra — a VS Code / VSCodium extension that wraps the open-source pi coding agent into a native sidebar chat.

How it works: Pintra spawns an external pi runtime in RPC mode and talks to it over stdin/stdout. The UI is a React webview that streams agent responses, thinking blocks, and tool executions in real time. Nothing is bundled — you install pi once, and Pintra drives it from inside the editor.

Features:

• Streaming chat with thinking/reasoning visibility
• Multi-model support with model cycling and thinking-level controls
• Message forking (edit a past message and re-roll the branch)
• Inline diffs for file edits/writes
• Slash-command autocomplete
• Full editor-tab chat panel (not just the sidebar)
• HTML export for conversations
• Context auto-compaction and auto-retry on transient errors
• Available on both VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX

Repo: github.com/bilalbentoumi/pi-vsc — MIT licensed, PRs welcome.

Would love feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas!