Morse — Pi coding agent for VS Code
Morse brings the Pi coding agent into VS Code as a chat panel, instead
of a terminal TUI. It drives your existing pi installation: the same models, credentials, tools, sessions and
context files you already use on the command line.
Features
- Chat sidebar — streaming answers, thinking blocks and tool calls rendered as cards with input/output.
- Scoped to your window — the navigation lists the sessions of the folders this window has open.
(The browser host is the global variant: every project pi knows about.)
- Sessions stay warm — switch between sessions without respawning the agent, and resume any pi session with
its history replayed (
morse.sessions.hotLimit, default 4).
- Context compaction — shrink the conversation context from the panel.
- Bring your own agent — Morse starts
pi --mode rpc in your workspace; nothing is re-implemented and no
API keys are stored by the extension.
- Same sessions — sessions are read from and written to your pi session directory, so a conversation
started with
pi in the terminal can be listed and resumed here.
- Steering — keep typing while the agent works: send a steer or a follow-up, or stop it.
- Model & thinking control — pick from the models pi has configured, and set the thinking level.
- Editor context — the active file, selection and open editors are attached to the prompt. Selecting text
shows a live chip in the composer whose line numbers follow the drag in real time; clicking it locks the
selection (new selections then make new chips), and
Morse: Attach Selection to Next Prompt still pins the
current selection in one command.
- Agent questions answered natively — when pi (or one of its extensions) asks for input, Morse shows a
QuickPick, InputBox or confirmation instead of a wall of text.
Requirements
- The
pi CLI, installed and authenticated (pi --version). If it is not on PATH, set morse.pi.path.
- VS Code 1.138 or newer.
Getting started
- Install the extension.
- Open the Morse icon in the activity bar (or run Morse: Open Chat).
- Ask a question. The first run starts a pi process in the current workspace.
If the panel reports that the agent is unavailable, open Morse: Show Log for the exact reason — usually a
missing pi binary or an unauthenticated provider.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
morse.pi.path |
"" |
Path to the pi executable. Empty uses pi from PATH. |
morse.pi.entry |
"" |
Run a pi RPC entry (dist/bundle/rpc-entry.js) with node instead of the binary. |
morse.pi.sessionDir |
"" |
Override the session directory (pi --session-dir). |
morse.pi.noSession |
false |
Run without persisting a session. |
morse.pi.extraArgs |
[] |
Extra arguments passed to pi. |
morse.pi.requestTimeoutMs |
30000 |
Per-request RPC timeout. |
morse.sessions.hotLimit |
4 |
How many sessions stay alive at once (LRU); the rest stay resumable from their session files. |
Commands
| Command |
Description |
Morse: Open Chat |
Focus the chat panel. |
Morse: New Session |
Start a fresh pi session. |
Morse: Attach Selection to Next Prompt |
Lock the current selection (same as clicking its live chip). |
Morse: Show Log |
Open the Morse output channel. |
Privacy
Morse talks to your local pi process. Prompts and responses go wherever your pi configuration sends them
(your configured provider, or a local model). The extension itself sends nothing anywhere and stores no
credentials. Anything you attach as context — the current file name, the selected text — is included in the
prompt, so review it before sending.
Without VS Code
The same chat UI and the same agent are available as a browser app served by a small NestJS host, for people
who do not want an editor open. See the repository README.
Source
The extension is one of two hosts in the Morse monorepo; @morse/core, @morse/protocol and
@morse/adapter-pi-rpc are shared with the NestJS host, and the frontend is a swappable package.
