PiLot Studio for VS Code

Your PI coding companion for VS Code and VSCodium

Integrate the powerful PI coding agent directly into VS Code with a beautiful Svelte-based GUI.

Working on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

Screenshots

Features

• 💬 Chat Interface — Interactive conversations with PI in a native VS Code panel
• 🌳 Session Tree — Navigate and branch through your conversation history
• 🤖 15+ AI Providers — Support for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama, Groq, and more
• 🔧 Customizable Tools — Enable, disable, or restrict PI's capabilities per session
• 📦 PI Packages — Install extensions, skills, and prompt templates from the community
• 🎙️ Local Dictation — On-device speech-to-text powered by whisper.cpp (macOS, Windows, Linux)
• ⚙️ Deep VS Code Integration — Right-click context menus, keyboard shortcuts, editor tabs
• 🧠 Thinking Levels — Control reasoning depth (off → minimal → low → medium → high → xhigh)
• 🔄 Model Cycling — Quick-switch between models without leaving the chat
• 🎨 Beautiful UI — Modern, responsive interface built with Svelte 5 with extensive customization
• 📎 File & Image Attachments — Drag-and-drop or paste files and images into chat
• 📋 Context Auto-Attach — Automatically include editor context, selection, and diagnostics
• 🏷️ @ File Mentions — Type @ to mention files and folders in your workspace

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or higher (or Codium 1.85.0+)
• PI CLI — Install the pi coding agent on your system
• An API key for your preferred AI provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.)

Node.js 24.16.0+ is only required for local development of this extension, not for installing or using it in VS Code.

Getting Started

1. Install PI — Follow the PI installation guide to install the pi CLI on your machine.
2. Install the extension from the VS Code Extensions view by searching for PiLot Studio, or use the Marketplace listing once the final publisher page is live.
3. Configure your provider — Set your API key as an environment variable:

   export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
   # or
   export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
   

4. Open PiLot Studio — Press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+P (or Cmd+Shift+Alt+P on macOS) to open the PiLot Studio panel.
5. Start a conversation — Type your message and press Enter.

Commands

Keyboard Shortcuts

macOS: Replace Ctrl with Cmd.

Context Menus

Editor: Right-click on selected code

• Explain Code with PI — Get an explanation of the selected code
• Refactor Code with PI — Get refactoring suggestions

Explorer: Right-click on a folder

• Analyze Project with PI — Analyze the project structure

Explorer: Right-click on any file

• Add File to Chat — Attach the file to the current conversation

Settings

The extension provides extensive configuration under the pi-agent.* namespace:

Runtime

• pi-agent.binaryPath — Custom pi executable path
• pi-agent.agentDir — Custom agent directory
• pi-agent.offline — Start pi in offline mode
• pi-agent.autoUpdate — Automatically update pi when a new version is available

Sessions

• pi-agent.thinkingLevel — Default reasoning level (off, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh)
• pi-agent.autoCompact — Enable automatic context compaction
• pi-agent.autoRetry — Enable automatic retry for transient errors
• pi-agent.restoreLastSession — Restore last chat session on startup
• pi-agent.messageHistory.enabled — Enable per-session prompt history recall

Tools

• pi-agent.toolPreset — Tool access mode (default, review, none, custom)
• pi-agent.customTools — Specific tools to allow in custom mode
• pi-agent.autoExpandSmallEdits — Auto-expand small edit blocks
• pi-agent.autoExpandEditLineThreshold — Line count threshold for auto-expand

Prompts

• pi-agent.disableContextFiles — Disable AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md loading
• pi-agent.systemPrompt — Override pi's default system prompt
• pi-agent.appendSystemPrompts — Append extra text to the active system prompt

Resources

• pi-agent.extraExtensions — Additional extension paths
• pi-agent.extraSkills — Additional skill paths
• pi-agent.extraPromptTemplates — Additional prompt template paths

Discovery

• pi-agent.disableExtensionDiscovery — Disable automatic extension discovery
• pi-agent.disableSkillDiscovery — Disable skill discovery
• pi-agent.disablePromptTemplateDiscovery — Disable prompt template discovery

Context

• pi-agent.context.autoAttach — Auto-attach editor context to prompts
• pi-agent.context.includeEditor — Include editor metadata
• pi-agent.context.includeSelection — Include selected text
• pi-agent.context.includeDiagnostics — Include diagnostics
• pi-agent.context.includeGit — Include git status

Dictation

• pi-agent.voice.enabled — Show/hide the microphone dictation button
• pi-agent.voice.model — Choose dictation model (tiny-q5_1, tiny, base-q5_1, etc.)

Diagnostics

• pi-agent.diagnostics.enabled — Enable high-signal diagnostic logging

Style

• pi-agent.fontSize — Font size in the sidebar panel
• pi-agent.fontFamily — Font family in the sidebar panel
• pi-agent.fontWeight — Font weight in the sidebar panel
• pi-agent.fontStyle — Font style in the sidebar panel

Dictation

The extension bundles whisper.cpp and native voice helpers for on-device speech-to-text.

Dictation runs entirely locally — no audio data ever leaves your device.

Supported platforms:

• macOS
• Windows x64 & ARM64
• Linux x64 & ARM64

Usage:

1. Click the microphone button in the chat input or use the Toggle Dictation command.
2. Grant microphone permission when prompted (first use only).
3. The first dictation model download requires internet; subsequent use is fully offline.

Configure the dictation model via pi-agent.voice.model (default: tiny-q5_1).

Troubleshooting

PI is not detected

• Ensure pi is installed and available on your PATH.
• Set pi-agent.binaryPath to the absolute path of the pi executable.
• Check that your pi version is compatible with the extension.

Provider requests fail

• Verify your API keys are set as environment variables or in pi's configuration.
• After updating a key, restart the extension so the spawned process picks up the new environment.

Dictation is unavailable

• Check that pi-agent.voice.enabled is turned on.
• Allow microphone access for VS Code in your OS privacy settings.
• Enable pi-agent.diagnostics.enabled and check the PiLot Studio Diagnostics output channel for details.

Sessions or history look wrong

• Verify pi-agent.agentDir points to the correct directory.
• If you switch agent directories, restart the extension to keep the running process and file-backed history aligned.

Diagnostics

Diagnostics are off by default. Enable pi-agent.diagnostics.enabled when troubleshooting.

When enabled, the extension writes high-signal progress and error logs to the PiLot Studio Diagnostics output channel, including lifecycle events, startup/runtime errors, model and thinking-level changes, compaction activity, token statistics, resource actions, and dictation state.

Use PiLot Studio: Show Diagnostics Log to inspect the current log, or PiLot Studio: Export Diagnostics Log... to save it to a file.

Architecture

pilots-studio/
├── src/
│   ├── extension.ts              # Extension entry point & command registration
│   ├── pi-agent-provider.ts      # Main provider — session lifecycle, settings sync, IPC
│   ├── message-handler.ts        # Webview ↔ extension message routing
│   ├── sessions-tree.ts          # Native VS Code tree view for session history
│   └── webview/                  # Svelte 5 UI application
│       ├── App.svelte            # Root component
│       └── components/           # Reusable UI components
├── media/
│   ├── icon.svg                  # Vector icon source
│   ├── icon.png                  # Marketplace and README icon
│   ├── kofi.webp                 # Sponsorship artwork
│   ├── kofi3.webp                # Alternate sponsorship artwork
│   └── voice/                    # Bundled dictation helpers and voice assets
├── dist/                         # Compiled extension output
└── dist-tsc/                     # Test compiler output

Development

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Compile TypeScript
pnpm run compile

# Build the Svelte webview
pnpm run webview:build

# Watch mode
pnpm run watch

# Run tests
pnpm test

# Lint
pnpm run lint

# Package for distribution (.vsix)
pnpm run package

Quick Build Command

pnpm run build    # Builds webview + compiles TS in one step

Technologies

• VS Code Extension API — Native VS Code integration
• Svelte 5 — Reactive UI framework with runes
• Vite 8 — Fast build tooling and HMR
• TypeScript 6 — Type-safe development
• ESBuild — Fast bundling
• PI SDK — @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to:

• Open an issue for bug reports or feature requests
• Submit a pull request with improvements

License

Apache-2.0