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Pi Extensions & Skills

Themes & UI tweaks

Pi’s TUI is themeable and extensible. Beyond colors, extensions can add status lines, footers, headers, and overlays. This area is more about taste than capability, so the “alternatives” range from built-in themes to UI extensions.

Alternatives

Section titled “Alternatives”

1. Built-in dark / light themes

Section titled “1. Built-in dark / light themes”

Pi ships dark and light themes. They hot-reload — edit the active theme file and Pi applies changes instantly, which makes them a great base for your own palette.

/settings   # choose theme

Benefits

  • Zero install; always available.
  • Hot reload makes iterating on colors fast.

Drawbacks

  • Just colors — no extra widgets.
  • Two starting points only.

2. Custom theme files (no package)

Section titled “2. Custom theme files (no package)”

Drop a theme into ~/.pi/agent/themes/ (global) or .pi/themes/ (project), or bundle it in a package to share. See the themes docs.

# Add a file under ~/.pi/agent/themes/ and select it via /settings

Benefits

  • Fully your palette; shareable as a package.
  • Hot-reloads like the built-ins.

Drawbacks

  • You design and maintain it.
  • Color work only.
Section titled “3. pi-powerline-footer (UI extension)”

For UI beyond color: a Powerline-style status bar for Pi, an example of how extensions can restyle the footer/status line.

Terminal window
pi install npm:pi-powerline-footer

Benefits

  • Adds a richer, informative status bar.
  • Demonstrates the extension UI surface (footers, status lines).

Drawbacks

  • Powerline glyphs need a compatible (Nerd) font in your terminal.
  • Cosmetic — no functional change.

Which should I pick?

Section titled “Which should I pick?”
  • Just want a different palette: tweak a built-in theme or add a custom theme file.
  • Want a richer status bar: pi-powerline-footer (install a Nerd Font).