Pi Intercom

What it does

Pi Intercom routes targeted messages, questions, replies, attachments, and presence information between connected Pi sessions on the same machine.

A local broker resolves the selected recipient while each session provides tool and overlay controls for user-driven or agent-driven coordination.

When to reach for it

Invocation: Use the intercom tool for agent coordination, or open /intercom to choose a connected session and compose a message.

One Pi session has findings another active session needs

Send a non-blocking direct message to the recipient's name or session ID.

A worker cannot proceed without a decision

Ask the owner session and continue after the correlated reply arrives.

A delegated child needs a supervisor decision or structured answers

Use the child-only supervisor bridge when Pi Subagents supplied the required metadata.

What it adds

• Direct send, ask, reply, pending, cancel, session-list, and connection-status actions.
• Local session presence plus a compose overlay and keyboard shortcut.
• Configurable inbound turn triggering and a bounded in-memory reconnect mailbox in the broker.

How it fits

• Pi Subagents: Pi Subagents owns child execution; Pi Intercom can provide a scoped child-to-supervisor bridge when launch metadata identifies the supervisor.

Common questions

What are the privacy boundaries?

• Normal routing stays on the same machine through a Unix socket or Windows named pipe; Windows TCP is explicit and loopback-only. This is a local transport boundary, not end-to-end encryption.
• Message text and attachments pass through the local broker, enter the recipient's agent-visible context, and are recorded in Pi session history. Do not use Intercom as a secrets vault or send content the recipient session should not retain.
• The broker runtime directory and files use owner-restricted modes on Unix-like systems, but processes running as the same local account remain inside the trust boundary.

Can an incoming message start model work automatically?

• Yes. The inbound policy can trigger all messages, replies only, or none. Busy interactive sessions receive steering delivery instead of an immediate turn.

Are messages broadcast?

• No. The broker routes a normal message to one resolved target. Ambiguous names fail, so session IDs are safer when names collide.

It’s working if

• Connected sessions appear in the roster and one targeted send reports delivery to the intended recipient.
• Ask and reply preserve their correlation, while inbound trigger policy controls whether delivery starts a model turn.

Source and setup

Provenance

Project

Pi Intercom

Origin

Nico Bailon

Current maintainer

Nico Bailon

Relationship

original

Installed source

npm:pi-intercom

Source path

View source (index.ts)

Compatibility

• Pi package and TUI APIs
• Same-machine local IPC
• Connected Intercom-enabled Pi sessions

License

MIT

License publication scope

Source link, independently written summary, attribution, and reviewed behavior and privacy-boundary claims.

Reviewed revision

0685e199b7003cddbb190352f1669fe23be8b9c2

Catalog revision

e0c035a297462c519315abfa1af31a1ed3bd9eef

Setup notes

• Created and maintained by Nico Bailon; this record reviews npm version 0.10.0 and its registry gitHead.
• The installed package and immutable source commit include the MIT License.
• Only sessions with the extension loaded, enabled, and connected to the local broker appear in discovery.
• The bundled coordination skill remains a secondary, unfeatured surface in this catalog record.