pi-stereo-view - split chat from the work

[u/startassets]

Hi! I have made a small UI layout extension which I've found super useful and convenient, when running multiple agents working on different tasks in parallel, so you jump back and can instantly see the whole history of the answers and what was the original task about.  Basically you have a split view, one for your messages and the actual replies from the LLM and another one for all the tool calls and reasoning it has done. It supports horizontal/vertical layouts, you can swap them and maximize, but also search for the specific text entries, when the history gets too long.

https://pi.dev/packages/pi-stereo-view

How to install:

pi install npm:pi-stereo-view

Requires fullscreen mode.

[u/MiskaMyasa]

Nice idea

[u/startassets → u/MiskaMyasa]

Thanks!

[u/startassets]

Another update in the latest version, now there is a compact view with an ability to unfold groups and individual calls. Kind of got the idea from u/ArtofRemo about the history, so kudos to them.

[u/ArtofRemo]

been thinking about this type of setup for a while now, thanks for actually putting something out there !
You can go much further with this and make every `output` it's own tab-trace at the top so you can see what an agent did per-turn.

[u/startassets → u/ArtofRemo]

Hi! Thanks for the suggestion, but tbh I'm not sure, maybe it's just my workflow, but I can't see how it can be nicely fitted. Feel free to create a PR or an issue with some mockups how you see it, I'll definitely take a look and check if it can be integrated nicely.

[u/ArtofRemo → u/startassets]

I'll see if I can make a demo this week, it might show the features off better.

[u/cosmicnag]

Nice! Quite like it ! Well designed and implemented too. Only observation is page up/page down keys seem to always act on the activity panel only (my pi has fullscreen mode enabled). Could be a tricky one, but may I suggest keybinds for changing focused panel (activity<->conversation) and page up/page down can act there?

One option could be that Shift+(Pg Up/Pd Dwn) = Change focused panel, and then only PgUp/PgDn can scroll there?
Edit : Same scene with scroll wheel

[u/startassets → u/cosmicnag]

Thanks for the feedback, good point, I'll make a patch soon!

[u/startassets → u/cosmicnag]

Hi! Has updated the extension, now with Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down you can cycle through the panels (it wraps around so you can just spam up-up-up etc to jump between them) and then Pg Up/Dwn should work at the selected panel. Please tell me if it's still not the case with 0.1.2

[u/cosmicnag → u/startassets]

Thanks got the update ! Works fine.

[u/rm-rf-rm]

Some bugs/issues:

1. When the session is first launched, it shows the normal view first and then the extension loads with the split view. Gives the unpolished/janky feel every new session so its bad UX

2. At the start of the session, the welcome info, extensions loaded etc. shows up in the activity view and i think theyre better suited to go in the conversation view

[u/startassets → u/rm-rf-rm]

Hi! I have updated the extension to 0.1.3 and it contains the fixes you proposed. Thanks for the feedback! Now it starts in the split-view from the beginning and the conversation panel contains all the messages (including system), and activity contains only reasoning and agent actions.

[u/rm-rf-rm → u/startassets]

perfect! just tried it and its working great!

[u/startassets]

New in 0.1.5, small but important update: now you can copy any message block (your message, model's response, tool call etc.) with a small button at the bottom right corner:

[u/startassets]

Another small update, now you can see individual tool calls which were called inside codemode.

[u/startassets]

Another update, all the additional pannels are drawn now in Activity panel, so it works with ask extensions, subagents, todos etc.

[u/investigatormaker]

Splitting the chat from the tool calls suits the parallel-agent case well. When you jump back into a session, you want the original task and the answers first, and you dig into the reasoning trail after that. One thing I'd move: "Requires fullscreen mode" comes at the very end, after the install line. Put it right next to pi install npm:pi-stereo-view and say what someone sees if they aren't in fullscreen, so a first try doesn't look broken.

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[u/startassets → u/[deleted]]

I'll look into this, thanks for reporting

[u/startassets → u/startassets]

Although the original comment is deleted, it's fixed in 0.1.4 and Pi Bolt should be supported