Pi Claude Style Tools

Claude Code inspired tool rendering for Pi — Shiki-powered diffs, status dots, branch connectors, file icons, and configurable output modes.

Features

• Compact built-in tool rendering for read, bash, grep, find, ls, edit, and write
• Claude-style OpenAI tool rendering for apply_patch plus common Pi/OpenAI-style tools like webfetch, web_search, fetch_content, task tools, and context tools
• apply_patch diff previews that render parsed file patches in the call phase, similar to edit/write
• Adaptive edit/write diffs with split or unified layouts, syntax highlighting, and inline word-level emphasis
• Diff stat bar with colored add/remove summary and hunk metadata
• Progressive collapsed diff hints that shorten on narrow terminals
• Thinking labels during streaming and final messages, with context sanitization
• MCP-aware rendering with hidden, summary, and preview modes
• Configurable output modes for read, search, bash, and MCP results
• Live running previews that show a few output lines for active tool calls (latest lines for bash), persisting until the next tool/text activity
• Subagent completion notifications restyled to match the same Claude-style tool rows
• RTK rewrite integration that folds rewrite notices into the bash tool row with a muted (RTK) badge and expanded-only rewrite details
• Transparent tool backgrounds in transparent or border mode
• Theme-adaptive palette — borders, branch connectors, dim text, spinner accent, and diff backgrounds automatically follow the active pi theme (set themeAdaptive: false to keep the fixed Claude-style palette)
• Light Ghostty-sync themes — edit/write diffs use github-light highlighting and light-tinted diff rows; tool pending dots use softer chrome colors
• Transparent edit/write diffs with universal red/green diff colors
• Grouped consecutive tool calls with a compact status header and per-tool glance rows (set groupToolCalls: false to disable)
• Extra detail toggle with Ctrl+Shift+O, increasing expanded preview caps without making the default view heavy
• Global border patch for all tool rows, including unknown/custom tools

Configuration

Set in .pi/settings.json or ~/.pi/settings.json:

{
  "toolBackground": "border",
  "readOutputMode": "preview",
  "searchOutputMode": "preview",
  "mcpOutputMode": "preview",
  "previewLines": 8,
  "expandedPreviewMaxLines": 4000,
  "extraExpandedPreviewMaxLines": 12000,
  "extraToolOutputExpanded": false,
  "groupToolCalls": true,
  "bashOutputMode": "opencode",
  "bashCollapsedLines": 10,
  "liveToolPreview": true,
  "liveToolPreviewLines": 5,
  "diffCollapsedLines": 24,
  "themeAdaptive": true,
  "diffTheme": "github-dark"
}

Theme integration

When themeAdaptive is true (default), the following colors are derived from the active pi theme on every render and re-derived whenever the theme changes:

User-supplied diffTheme presets and diffColors overrides always win over theme-derived defaults. File-type icons (e.g. ts, py, rs) keep their language-identity colors and are not theme-derived.

Set themeAdaptive: false to keep the original fixed Claude-style palette regardless of the active pi theme.

On /resume, /new, or /fork, tool chrome is rebound from the current pi theme (no coupling to Ghostty or other theme extensions). If you use Ghostty sync, listing it above this extension in settings.json is recommended so setTheme runs before chrome rebind.

Toggle at runtime with /cc-theme

/cc-theme           # show current setting + theme name
/cc-theme status    # show current setting + color preview (incl. spinner)
/cc-theme on        # follow pi theme
/cc-theme off       # keep fixed Claude palette
/cc-theme toggle    # flip the current value

The selection is persisted to ~/.pi/settings.json and applied to the next rendered tool row. No restart required.

Repaint the spinner with /cc-spinner

The spinner glyph itself is still colored by pi's loader using accent, while the verb text (e.g. Cooking…) follows borderAccent by default so it stays lively without being the exact same color as the glyph. The status suffix (e.g. (thinking · ↓ 10 tokens · 2s)) follows muted. Use /cc-spinner to bind either text element to any other theme color key:

/cc-spinner preview          # list every common theme key with a colored sample
/cc-spinner verb <key>       # change the verb color (e.g. thinkingHigh, mdHeading)
/cc-spinner status <key>     # change the status suffix color
/cc-spinner reset            # restore defaults (verb=borderAccent, status=muted)

The selection is persisted as spinnerVerbColor / spinnerStatusColor in ~/.pi/settings.json and applied on the next spinner tick.

Tool background modes

Use /cc-tools to control tool UI at runtime:

/cc-tools status          # show style, grouping, and extra-detail state
/cc-tools outlines        # tool style: outlines, transparent, or default
/cc-tools group toggle    # toggle grouped adjacent/concurrent tool calls
/cc-tools group off       # disable grouping (also ungroups current grouped rows)
/cc-tools detail toggle   # same mode as Ctrl+Shift+O

Output modes

Display settings

Notes

This package targets recent Pi versions where tool renderers use:

• renderCall(args, theme, context)
• renderResult(result, { expanded, isPartial }, theme, context)

Unknown/custom tools do not have a public global renderer hook in Pi, so this package patches container rendering to add top/bottom borders for all tool executions in border mode.

Credits

This project builds upon and was inspired by the excellent work of:

• @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-pretty by huynhgiabuu — Pretty terminal output with syntax-highlighted file reads, colored bash output, and tree-view directory listings
• @heyhuynhgiabuu/pi-diff by huynhgiabuu — Shiki-powered terminal diff renderer with word-level diffs in split and unified views
• pi-tool-display by MasuRii — Compact tool call rendering, diff visualization, and output truncation