Arnative

Refined aesthetics. Cohesive tools. Built for Pi.

Overview

pi-arnative replaces pi’s default terminal chrome with a unified visual interface.

• Warm Themes: Contrast-checked OKLCH color palettes generated without drift (arnative plus 10 variants).
• Tabbed Header: Compact box menu showing Directory, Model, Context, Skills, Extensions, and Shortcuts.
• Rounded Tool Boxes: Status, spinner, runtime duration, and clickable [show] / [hide] output toggles.
• Task List: todo tool, /todos view, and a boxed widget above the editor that auto-hides 30s after all tasks finish.
• Enhanced Footer: 3-row status grid (Arnative (Full)) or single collapsible row (Arnative (Minimal)) tracking branch, diff, active duration, and token speed.
• Working Spinners: 18 animated presets with live picker preview and optional [g] gradient sweep.
• Transcript Clock: Per-message timestamps with clean bubble backgrounds.
• Usage Dashboard: Real-time token counts and cost tracking across local sessions via /usage.
• Custom Providers: Interactive /providers wizard to probe endpoints, pick models, set thinking levels, edit the base URL, provider id or API key, and save OpenAI-, Anthropic-, Gemini-, or Ollama-compatible channels to models.json and auth.json.
• Model Heal: Background sync (/model-heal) that fills missing compat flags, /models token limits, and accepted reasoning effort levels in models.json.
• Auto-compact: Automatic context compaction after a turn settles using smart window tiers or a fixed token budget.

Install

pi install npm:@bismawy/pi-arnative

Requires a Nerd Font. On a fresh install, arnative is applied automatically if no theme is set; switch anytime via /arnative themes or /settings → Theme.

Local development:

npm run dev                  # run pi against this checkout, nothing installed
npm run overlay              # copy extensions/ lib/ themes/ into the installed npm package

To see a change before publishing it: npm run overlay, then press /reload in pi — pi re-evaluates extension TypeScript in the same process, so the reload loads the copied code with no reinstall and no restart. The package stays an npm install; nothing points pi at this directory. A module deleted here is pruned from the installed copy (a stale entry point would keep loading), and pi update --extensions restores the published code once a higher version exists. npm run overlay -- --dry-run lists what would move; PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR targets another agent dir.

Shortcuts

{
  "app.session.new": ["ctrl+alt+n", "alt+n"]
}

Architecture

npm test                              # Run self-checks and unit tests
npm run themes                        # Regenerate theme JSON files
npm run preview                       # Live preview in Pi and stamp .git/arnative-preview
git config core.hooksPath .githooks   # Enable pre-push preview verification hook

License

Distributed under the MIT license.

Author

Bisma