Ask Mode Extension

Read-only mode for safe code analysis in pi coding agent.

Features

• /ask command - Toggle ask mode on/off
• /ask <question> command - Enable ask mode and ask a question in one step
• Restricted toolset - Only read-only tools available when enabled
• Bash allowlist - Only safe, read-only bash commands are allowed
• Status indicator - Shows "❓ ask" in footer when active

Usage

Toggle Ask Mode

/ask

Toggle ask mode on/off. When enabled:

• Available tools: read, bash, grep, find, ls
• edit and write tools are disabled
• Bash commands are restricted to an allowlist (see below)

Ask a Question

/ask what does this file do?

Enable ask mode (if not already enabled) and immediately ask a question. The agent will answer using only read-only tools.

When disabled:

• Full access is restored with all your original tools

Allowed Bash Commands

Ask mode restricts bash to these read-only commands:

• File viewing: cat, head, tail, less, more
• Searching: grep, find, rg, fd
• Info commands: ls, pwd, file, stat, du, df, tree
• Text processing: wc, sort, uniq, diff, sed, awk, jq
• System info: env, printenv, uname, whoami, id, date, uptime, ps, top, htop, free
• Git (read-only): status, log, diff, show, branch, remote, config
• npm/yarn (read-only): list, ls, view, info, search, outdated, audit
• Version checks: node --version, python --version
• Network: curl, wget

Installation

Using pi install (recommended)

From npm:

pi install npm:pi-ask-mode

From GitHub:

pi install git:github.com/markokocic/pi-ask-mode

Manual Installation

Copy the files to your extensions directory:

~/.pi/agent/extensions/ask-mode/

• index.ts - Main extension code
• utils.ts - Utility functions

pi will automatically load extensions from ~/.pi/agent/extensions/.

License

Copyright (c) 2026-present Marko Kocic

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at: https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/

SPDX-License-Identifier: EPL-2.0