pi-interactive-lite

Lightweight interactive-shell replacement for pi (~150 tokens/round vs ~5,000 for a full interactive-shell package).

What it gives you

1. user_input tool — ask the user to type a free-form answer (a value, a path, a confirmation text) through pi's native themed input dialog.

   { "question": "What port should the dev server use?", "placeholder": "e.g. 3000" }
   

   Rules of thumb:

   • Structured choices (options pickers) belong in your host's question tool, not here.
   • Secrets (passwords, TOTP, keys) never go through this tool or the transcript. Use the skill's attach helper below so the user types them somewhere that isn't logged.

2. tmux-pty skill — teaches pi itself how to drive interactive terminal programs (coding-agent CLIs, auth flows, approval prompts) through tmux with plain bash. tmux is the PTY manager; no special tools are needed:

   Need	Command
   Spawn detached	tmux new-session -d -s NAME 'CMD'
   Read the screen	tmux capture-pane -p -t NAME
   Type into the program	tmux send-keys -t NAME 'text' Enter
   Hand control to the user — auto-open a terminal	nohup konsole --workdir ~ -e tmux attach -t NAME & (kitty alternative included)
   Capture output while away	tmux pipe-pane -t NAME -o 'cat >> /tmp/NAME.log'
   Kill	tmux kill-session -t NAME

Why not just load more machinery?

A full interactive-shell package costs roughly 5,000 tokens of every round for schema, descriptions, and prompt text that most tasks never touch. The tmux workflow costs ~0 standing tokens — the skill listing is the only overhead — and covers typing into spawned TUIs, hand-off for secrets, and takeover supervision. Verified end-to-end driving pi's own TUI and sudo authorization.

Requirements

• tmux on PATH (tested on tmux 3.4; add set -g extended-keys on to ~/.tmux.conf so send-keys Enter works reliably into TUIs)

Use

pi install npm:pi-interactive-lite

Or point settings at a checkout: { "packages": ["/path/to/pi-interactive-lite"] }.

MIT licensed.