pi-aside

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An AI agent in Chrome's side panel. Ask about the page you are on, or hand pi a task: it reads the page, clicks and
types, moves through a site and its tab group, writes and runs its own scripts when clicking is not enough, and shows
you every step. It is a general agent: everything it does comes from the same few tools (read the page, observe it, act
on it, run a script, take a screenshot).

Use your ChatGPT plan, or your own OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, or DeepSeek API key. There is no pi-aside server:
requests go straight from your browser to your provider.

pi-aside is an experimental project built on pi-durable.

Add to Chrome

Why pi-aside

• It reads the page with you. Summarize, explain, translate, proofread, or draft a reply, from selected text or
  the whole page. pi can also read a chart from a screenshot, or an image or text file you drop in.
• It does tasks, not just answers. pi clicks, types, picks options, and moves across pages and the tabs in your
  tab group, checking each step until the task is done.
• It can program the page. When clicking is slow or impossible, pi writes a short script: it rewrites the page in
  place, collects every row of a long table, or fetches data with your login. By default, you see the code first.
• Tasks keep going. pi-aside runs on
  pi-durable, the pi project's durable agent
  runtime. Every step is saved as it happens, so a task goes on while you switch tabs or chats, and picks up again if
  Chrome stops pi's background worker.
• Your model, no middleman. Your ChatGPT plan or one of four API providers, a different model per message if you
  like, and each chat's cost shown as it grows. Open source (MIT), no analytics.

Install

pi-aside needs Chrome 140 or later.

From the Chrome Web Store: Add to Chrome.

From a release: download pi-aside-<version>.zip from
Releases and unzip it into a new folder. Open chrome://extensions,
turn on Developer mode, click Load unpacked, and choose that folder. To update, unzip the new version into the same
folder and press the reload icon on pi-aside's card. Keep the folder where it is: Chrome treats a folder in another
place as another extension, without your settings, keys, and chats. The same goes between a store install and an
unzipped one.

From source (Node.js 22.19+):

git clone https://github.com/yzhg1983/pi-aside
cd pi-aside
npm ci --ignore-scripts   # dependencies, without install scripts
npm run build             # writes dist/

Load the dist/ folder as above. To update, pull, build again, and press the reload icon on pi-aside's card;
settings, keys, and chats are kept.

Quick start

1. Click pi-aside's toolbar button, or press Ctrl+Shift+U (Cmd+Shift+U on a Mac).
2. Pick a provider, paste an API key, and Save; allow access when Chrome asks. For a ChatGPT plan, choose OpenAI, then
   Continue with ChatGPT.
3. Optional: Settings > Answers > Answer language sets the language pi answers in and translates into. By default,
   it follows Chrome's language.
4. Type a question or a task in the message box, and send it. For other ways, see How to start.
5. Let pi run scripts: when the card Allow pi to run scripts (optional) asks, open pi-aside's Chrome details page, turn on
   Allow User Scripts (scroll down), and come back. Skipped it? Settings > Tools links to the same page.

How to start

Open pi on the page you want help with. On a Mac, use Cmd instead of Ctrl
(change shortcuts).

Examples

None of these is a built-in feature. Each is one question, and pi chose the tools itself: reading the page, clicking
and typing, running a script, taking a screenshot. They are a few things we tried, not a list of what pi can do: ask
for your own.

_{The screenshots and animations below are real runs of GPT-6.1 Sol through a ChatGPT plan, on live sites.
Results and timing vary by model and run.}

Summarize a page

"Summarize this page in 5 short bullet points." Beside Paul Graham's essay
How to Do Great Work, pi reads the page and answers in seconds. Ask a
follow-up in the same chat.

Draw on a whiteboard

"Draw a cute cartoon pig, big and colorful: a round pink body, floppy ears, a snout with two nostrils, rosy cheeks, a
curly tail, and a happy smile. Then add a small sign next to it that says 'Hello from pi'." On
Excalidraw, pi draws it with one script, as shapes you can edit, and fits it in view.

_{Sped up. The finished drawing as a still image.}

More to try

• "Build a Pomodoro timer here: start, pause, and reset, a progress ring, and a calm color theme. Then run it." On
  JSFiddle, pi writes the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, runs the result, and tests its buttons.
• "In a new Python notebook, load the Titanic passengers from
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mwaskom/seaborn-data/master/titanic.csv, plot the survival rate by class and sex,
  and give me the 3 main findings in a few words each." On JupyterLite, which
  runs Python in the page, pi writes and runs the cells, then reads the chart.
• "Which areas do the 100 newest open issues fall in? Chart them on this page, and highlight the 5
  most-discussed." On VS Code's issues, pi reads the 100 newest issues,
  sorts them into areas, and adds the chart to the page.
• "Compare the three laptops in this tab group: price, weight, battery, and ports." pi reads each tab and makes a
  table.
• "Fill in this form from the details below, and stop before you submit." pi types into each field and leaves the
  last click to you.

Save repeatable tasks as prompts: page translation and YouTube summaries.

You stay in control

Settings > Tools turns each tool (read, observe, act, run script, screenshot) Off or On; acting and running scripts
can also Ask. Out of the box, acting on a page and running scripts ask first.

Enforced by pi-aside, whatever the model says:

• In Ask, pi needs your OK once per site in each answer before it acts, and shows every script in full before it runs.
• If Chrome stops pi in the middle of a click or a script, pi does not repeat it: the model is told it may have
  happened and to check the page first. Steps that are harmless to repeat, such as reading the page, simply run
  again (details).
• pi reads a tab only after you open it there, or on a site you allowed.
• It goes only to pages of the current site, unless you allow another.
• It never types into password, payment card, or one-time code fields, and leaves typed form values out of what it
  reads.
• Every step shows in the chat. Stop, or Esc, ends the task. A message you send while pi works joins the task after
  its current step, so you can correct it on the way; Alt+Enter sends it after the answer instead (Settings > Sending
  swaps the two).

Asked of the model, not enforced: confirm before submitting, sending, deleting, buying, or downloading; never enter
payment details; ignore commands written on web pages.

What remains: pi acts as you, with your login. A page can hide text written to mislead it, and models make
mistakes. Keep Ask for email, banking, admin pages, and anywhere a wrong click matters.

Privacy

• No pi-aside server and no analytics. Requests go straight to the provider you choose.
• Update in Settings > Models downloads the public model list from pi.dev; it sends no key, chat, or page.
• Chats, settings, and keys stay in your Chrome profile. Keys are stored unencrypted there.
• Chats are kept until you delete them all (Settings > Advanced > Data). Details: PRIVACY.md.

Learn more

• User guide: settings, images and text files, chats and History, prompts and slash commands, models
  and thinking, editing a question, diagrams, web search, shortcuts, languages, and limits.

pi-aside is unofficial: the pi project, which makes pi-durable, does not make or endorse it.

License

MIT. Bundled packages keep their own licences, listed in dist/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt by each build.