Scroll through conversation history while composing a follow-up message. Solves the problem where typing in pi's composer snaps the terminal back to the bottom, losing your scroll position.
pi install npm:pi-read-modeOr via git:
pi install git:github.com/minghinmatthewlam/pi-read-mode- Scroll + compose simultaneously — read the agent's response while typing your follow-up
- Pixel-perfect rendering — captures pi's actual rendered output, not a reconstruction
- Keyboard scrolling — arrow keys, Page Up/Down, Home/End
- Mouse/trackpad scrolling — scroll wheel works in the viewport
- Paste support — text paste and image-to-filepath paste (via Ghostty/iTerm2)
- Composer at bottom — single-line input with Emacs-style editing
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Alt+R |
Enter read mode |
/read |
Enter read mode (slash command) |
Up / Down |
Scroll one line |
Page Up / Page Down |
Scroll one page |
Home / End |
Jump to top / bottom |
Enter |
Send follow-up message |
Escape |
Cancel and exit |
Read mode is available when the agent is idle. It captures the current conversation display and shows it in a scrollable viewport with a pinned composer.
When you enter read mode, the extension captures pi's already-rendered TUI component tree by calling render(width) on the existing children. This produces the exact same ANSI-styled lines pi normally displays — no markdown reconstruction or custom rendering. The captured output is shown in a scrollable viewport with a composer pinned at the bottom. On terminal resize, components are re-rendered at the new width.
MIT