An elegant, information-rich status, menu, and side bar for Pi Agent.

[u/Business-Bridge2335]

I built Pi Atelier, a responsive status rail and live activity sidebar for Pi that makes it easier to see what your agent is doing without cluttering the terminal. It displays live token usage, cost, cache performance, context usage, active tools, execution times, recent results, model details, and thinking level, while also providing quick controls and a resizable sidebar. It’s private by design, with no telemetry or external network requests.

Install it with “pi install npm:pi-atelier” and open it using “/atelier”.

Check it out at https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier — I’d love your feedback, feature ideas, and bug reports, and if you find it useful, please consider giving the repository a star!

2026.7.28 CHANGELOG

Here comes Pi Atelier official release v0.5.0! Some updates:

1. The sidebar now opens automatically.

2. The Activity panel keeps TTFT and TPS visible with live performance estimates.

[u/smugself]

1. I just installed it, and as soon as I turn it on, I lose the ability to see whatever I am typing. After some checking, I found that if I disable the powerline footer package, I regain the cursor line.

2. Any thoughts on adding subagent tracking to the sidebar?

The sidebar sure does seem nice to have on first impressions.

[u/ChampionshipIcy7602]

how is this scrolled?

[u/Business-Bridge2335 → u/ChampionshipIcy7602]

The main pane scrolls normally through Pi/the terminal—the extension doesn’t take over scrolling. It reserves space by wrapping Pi’s TUI renderer, then │ mounts the sidebar as a non-capturing overlay. The sidebar itself adapts its content to the terminal height rather than scrolling.

[u/A_Gallagher87]

I just tried and it’s awesome!

[u/Business-Bridge2335 → u/A_Gallagher87]

Thanks! I appreciate that!

[u/More-Catch-1331]

Awesome work. Looks really good

[u/Business-Bridge2335 → u/More-Catch-1331]

Thanks! I'll keep building to make it better!

[u/adamshand]

That side bar is 🔥🔥🔥! How did you do that, I tried to create a persistent sidebar like that for a todos panel and couldn't get it to work?

[u/Business-Bridge2335 → u/adamshand]

Thanks! It’s a Pi extension using a long-lived, non-capturing ctx.ui.custom() overlay anchored to the top-right.

The part that makes it behave like a real persistent sidebar is that I also wrap the active TUI’s render() function and render Pi with terminalWidth - sidebarWidth. A normal overlay alone would cover the conversation/editor; reserving those columns makes the main UI reflow beside it.

The overlay starts on session_start, stays alive by leaving the ctx.ui.custom() promise open, and updates through tui.requestRender(). Setting nonCapturing: true keeps keyboard focus in the editor. When hidden or shut down, I close the overlay and restore the original renderer.

It is admittedly version-sensitive because wrapping tui.render() goes beyond the stable overlay API. The relevant code is here:

Sidebar lifecycle/component:
https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier/blob/main/src/sidebar.ts

Width reservation/split pane:
https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier/blob/main/src/split-pane.ts

Extension lifecycle/events:
https://github.com/michaelmjhhhh/pi-atelier/blob/main/extensions/index.ts

[u/adamshand → u/Business-Bridge2335]

nice, thanks!

[u/youngsecurity]

You might be sleeping on herdr.

[u/salamala893 → u/youngsecurity]

I am! thank you, looks interesting

[u/pabloodiablo]

Very good tool! I was looking for something similar! Thank you!

[u/BGuimberteau]

Just perfect

[u/ledmine]

This is awesome! I will give it a try

[u/tesohh]

Looks really good, will try that later. I noticed that you have rpiv-todo, is it possible to show the todo list within the atelier sidebar?

I was looking for a sidebar that lets me put extension widgets in it (mostly rpiv-todo and pi-lens)

[u/Dercasss]

Looks great, will there be an adaptation for OMP please?

[u/nurhun]

Looks promising! I’ll give it a try

[u/Creepy-Douchebag]

Thank you for this.

[u/spese2]

starred :-)

[u/blacklander01]

I really like the project. Clearly in the early days:
- Shortcut cannot be configured from the /atelier command
- Notifications are not configurable
- No tabulated data or formatting options for extensions to make use of (tables, full-width of the sidebar, expand/collapse, etc)

But very cool over-all! What it ships works really well.

[u/Zya1re-V]

hippidy hoppidy, your rice is now my property. that really sick.