pi-toasts

Show extension notifications as small top-right cards that disappear on their own, rather than permanent rows in the chat. They do not take keyboard focus from your editor or dialogs. A little less transcript confetti.

Pi's own status, warning and error lines are unchanged. This only affects extension calls to ctx.ui.notify(...) in the interactive terminal UI. RPC, JSON and print modes keep normal notifications.

Behaviour

The overlay is removed when the last toast expires, not just hidden. On /reload or shutdown, timers are cleared and the original notification function is restored if this extension still owns the wrapper.

Internally, the extension obtains the TUI through a setWidget factory rather than ctx.ui.custom(), which would count as a blocking UI prompt.

Settings (environment)

Variable	Default	Meaning
`PI_TOAST_CAPTURE`	on	Set to `0` to leave `ctx.ui.notify` unchanged.
`PI_TOAST_WIDTH`	`44`	Card width in terminal columns, clamped to fit.
`PI_TOAST_MAX_VISIBLE`	`3`	Maximum visible cards; new ones replace the oldest above this limit.
`PI_TOAST_TIMEOUT_INFO`	`4000`	Info toast lifetime in milliseconds.
`PI_TOAST_TIMEOUT_WARNING`	`6000`	Warning toast lifetime in milliseconds.
`PI_TOAST_TIMEOUT_ERROR`	`8000`	Error toast lifetime in milliseconds.

Toasts hide below 30 columns or eight rows. Text is truncated using pi-tui's terminal-width helpers.

Limitations

Only extension notifications emitted after this package loads are captured. Pi's own transcript rows and project-trust dialogs are not.
In Pi 1.4.0, switching TUI mode through /settings is blocked while a toast is visible. Wait for it to expire; there is no hook to dismiss it on opening settings.
Ghostty / Herdr on macOS and layout during model streaming are not verified in CI. Unit tests cover timers and redraw hooks, not live streaming layout.
Another extension calling tui.hideOverlay() can pop the topmost overlay, which may be this one (Pi 1.4.0 stack behaviour).