longhand

I noticed I was getting lazier. Not slower. The agent wrote the code, I skimmed the diff, it passed, I moved on. A few weeks later I could not explain parts of my own project.

It compounds. Code you did not write is code you do not really read. Code you do not read gets messier, because nobody is pushing back on it. Messier code is harder to read, so you lean on the agent more. Eventually only the agent can fix the bugs, and the agent gets worse too, because the project it has to hold in context keeps growing.

Reviewing harder does not fix this. Nobody reads a 400-line diff with real attention, and everyone clicks approve.

longhand shrinks the unit you approve back down to something that fits in your head. The agent still does the tedious half: reading, searching, running the build and the tests, finding the actual cause. It just does not write into your project. It hands you one change at a time, and you are the one who puts it in.

The goal: at the end of the day, you can explain everything that went in.

What it does

longhand is a Pi extension that limits writing tools, asks the agent to hand over one change at a time, and publishes the proposal on a local page with code that is easy to copy.

Install

After a release is pushed to GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/rafaelmarins2003/longhand@v0.1.0

To try a local checkout without installing it:

pi --no-extensions -e /path/to/longhand

If this directory is already at ~/.pi/agent/extensions/longhand, Pi loads it automatically. Do not also install a Git or npm copy in the same Pi configuration: both copies would register the same commands and tools.

Pi also supports npm packages. Once pi-longhand is published, install it with pi install npm:pi-longhand. Pi supplies the runtime modules used here.

Use

The mode starts on. Ask the agent for a code change; it investigates and shows a localhost link in the terminal. The page explains the cause, names the file and location, shows the code to paste, and says how to verify it. Copy code does not change the project. Makes sense and Request a change send feedback into the Pi conversation.

The page server binds only to 127.0.0.1. Links work while the Pi session is open. Closing Pi removes the pages held in memory. In --print mode, the URL appears but the process exits before the page can be opened; use an interactive session for this workflow.

longhand is a guard against accidental edits, not a shell sandbox. Commands that execute arbitrary code can still write files, and /longhand allow can restore writing tools.

Development

Tested with Pi 0.87.0. Run npm test to check the command classifier and local page server. To check extension loading without calling a model, run pi --mode rpc --offline --no-session --no-extensions -e ./index.ts and send {"type":"get_entries"} to standard input.

See ROADMAP.md for design decisions and remaining work.