pi-auto-title

Gives an unnamed Pi session a name, without ever getting in the way.

The extension waits until the agent's first turn has settled — the reply is already on screen — and only then asks a model for a short title from the opening exchange. The first message is never delayed, blocked, or rewritten.

Install

pi install git:github.com/himicoswilson/pi-auto-title

Why not in the message path

Some auto-title extensions generate the name inside input or before_agent_start, which means every first message of every session waits for an extra model round-trip before the agent even sees it. This extension hooks agent_settled instead: by the time it does anything, the turn it names is already over. Generation failures are silent — a session that cannot be titled keeps whatever name it has, including none.

Behavior

• A session with a name is never renamed automatically: --name, /name, and names from a resumed session are all respected.
• Each session is titled at most once, after its first settled turn.
• If you rename the session yourself afterwards, the extension stands down for the rest of that session and never touches the name again.
• /retitle regenerates the title on demand, even after you renamed the session by hand; the new automatic name becomes the one the extension tracks.
• A titling model named by the environment or the config file that cannot be resolved or has no configured auth disables titling rather than falling back to the session's model. Quota is never spent somewhere you did not ask.

Configuration

Two commands set the persistent preferences from inside Pi:

• /title-model — pick the model titles are generated with in a searchable picker styled after Pi's own /model page (type to filter; the entry currently in effect is marked), or run it as /title-model provider/model-id; clear returns to the session model.
• /title-language — pick the language titles are written in, or run it as /title-language zh; auto (or clear) matches the conversation again. Any language name may be written in the config file directly.
• /title-status — show the preferences in effect and the most recent generation record in this session.

Generation records

Every generation attempt leaves a pi-auto-title entry in the session file: when it ran, which model was requested and which layer chose it, the model the provider reports actually answering (with its response id when it sends one), and how the attempt ended — titled, failed, or skipped fail-closed with the reason. Nothing is written anywhere else, and the entries are not part of the conversation the model sees. Grep a session file for pi-auto-title to audit what named your sessions.

Choices are stored in the extension's own file, ~/.pi/agent/pi-auto-title.json (or $PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR), never in Pi's settings.json:

{ "model": "openrouter/deepseek/deepseek-chat", "language": "en" }

Both keys are optional, and the file may be edited by hand — it is re-read whenever a title is generated. Resolution is key by key: an environment variable beats the config file, which beats the default (the session model; the conversation's language).

Development

npm install
npm test    # node --test over test/
npm run check  # tsc --noEmit

src/policy.ts is pure logic and fully unit-tested. src/generate.ts does the single model call with a 15-second timeout. src/extension.ts is wiring only: events, the per-session state machine, and /retitle.