Pi Blinking Cursor

A Pi package that replaces the TUI editor's static reverse-video cursor with an activity-aware terminal hardware cursor.

Behavior

• The active editor uses a blinking vertical bar.
• While an agent run is active, an inactive empty editor uses a steady underline across message streaming, tool execution, retries, and automatic continuations.
• Clicking, dragging, or typing inside the editor restores the blinking bar for at least three seconds.
• Unsent editor text keeps the blinking bar active after the inactivity period.
• If the editor is empty and receives no activity for three seconds while streaming continues, the cursor returns to a steady underline.
• A non-empty fullscreen transcript selection also changes the cursor to a steady underline.
• Exiting Pi restores the terminal's configured default cursor style.

The terminal remains responsible for its cursor appearance when the entire terminal pane or window loses operating-system focus.

Requirements

• Pi 1.0.0 or newer
• Node.js 22.19 or newer
• A terminal that supports DECSCUSR cursor-shape sequences

No manual Pi setting is required. The extension enables the hardware cursor for its session, reasserts it after /reload reapplies persisted display settings, and restores the user's previous showHardwareCursor value when the session shuts down.

Install

pi install npm:pi-blinking-cursor

How it works

The extension temporarily enables Pi's hardware cursor, subclasses CustomEditor, preserves Pi's hardware-cursor marker, and removes only the built-in editor's reverse-video opening sequence at that marker. It restores the previous hardware-cursor preference on shutdown. It also enables embedWorkingStatus, matching Pi's default editor so the Working label and spinner remain on the upper editor border.

It requests cursor shapes with standard DECSCUSR sequences:

• CSI 5 SP q: blinking bar
• CSI 4 SP q: steady underline
• CSI 0 SP q: terminal-configured default

The agent_start and agent_settled events define the complete active interval without gaps between messages, tools, retries, or automatic continuations. Editor input and mouse events provide activity, with a three-second idle timer. Fullscreen transcript selection is detected through Pi's hasActiveSelection() capability.

Compatibility

The cursor sequences are supported by Windows Terminal and xterm.js-based terminals, including the VS Code and VSCodium integrated terminals.

Transcript-selection detection is available in fullscreen mode. Regular mode still uses the hardware cursor, but native terminal scrollback selection does not trigger the underline state. hasActiveSelection() is not currently part of Pi's public TUI type, so a future Pi update may require that integration point to change.