@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

A pi extension that color-codes the active model in the footer, so you can tell at a glance which model family is in use.

It replaces the plain claude-opus-4-8 • medium text in the bottom-right of pi's footer with independently background-colored model and thinking badges. Everything else the default footer shows (cwd, git branch, token stats, context %, and other extensions' status line) is faithfully reproduced.

Colors

Model families are matched by substring against the model id and painted with strongly distinct hues:

Thinking badges use the same colors as pi's input-area border for each thinking level (off, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh, max). They follow the active pi theme, including theme changes and 256-color terminals. Model badges choose a black or white foreground from the background's luminance. Thinking badges also choose black or white text based on contrast with the resolved border color. The badges follow model changes made via /model or Ctrl+P.

Install

pi install npm:@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

Then reload (or restart pi):

/reload

To try it for a single run without installing:

pi -e npm:@yusukeshib/pi-colored-model-status

Customize

Edit the MODEL_BADGES array at the top of extensions/colored-model-status.ts. Each entry maps substring keywords to an RGB background (and an optional fg):

const MODEL_BADGES = [
  { match: ["opus", "terra"], bg: [147, 51, 234] },
  { match: ["sonnet", "luna"], bg: [14, 165, 233] },
  { match: ["fable", "sol"], bg: [234, 88, 12] },
  // …add your own, e.g.:
  { match: ["deepseek"], bg: [30, 90, 200] },
];

Matching is a case-insensitive substring test against the model id, so gpt matches gpt-4o, o3 matches o3-mini, and so on. The first matching entry wins.

How it works

theme.bg() only accepts theme tokens, so to render arbitrary, model-specific colors the extension emits raw SGR truecolor escapes (48;2;R;G;B) directly. Thinking badges instead use pi's themed editor border foreground color as their background, with contrasting text. It uses ctx.ui.setFooter() to take over the footer and re-implements pi's default footer layout, coloring only the model + thinking-level segment.

Because it re-creates the footer, it mirrors pi's default footer rendering as of the pinned @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent version. If pi's footer layout changes upstream, this extension may need updating to match.

Note on the (auto) context indicator

pi's default footer appends (auto) to the context-usage figure when auto-compaction is enabled. That state is not exposed to extensions, so this reimplementation leaves it blank. If you rely on that indicator, adjust autoInd in the source.

Requirements

Requires a truecolor-capable terminal (most modern terminals: iTerm2, Kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, Windows Terminal, VS Code). Check with:

echo $COLORTERM   # "truecolor" or "24bit"

License

MIT © Yusuke Shibata