pi-test

name	pi-test
description	Test pi package TUI components using pilotty for PTY-based terminal automation. Use when the user wants to test, verify, or validate TUI components built with pi-tui in their pi package — interactive selectors, overlays, dialogs, custom editors, status indicators, or any ctx.ui.custom() output. Also use when the user says "test the TUI", "verify the UI renders", "check my component", "run pilotty", "test my extension's UI", or asks about TUI testing strategies for pi packages. Do not use for unit testing non-TUI code, linting, type checking, or testing tools that only return text without rendering a TUI.
compatibility	Requires pilotty (npm install -g pilotty). macOS or Linux. No Windows support.
allowed-tools	Bash read edit write

Pi Package TUI Testing with Pilotty

This skill guides you through testing TUI components built with @earendil-works/pi-tui inside a pi package. Pilotty provides PTY-based terminal automation — it spawns terminal applications in background sessions, captures screen state as structured data, and sends keyboard/mouse input programmatically.

Why Pilotty for Pi TUI Testing

Pi TUI components render inside the pi terminal application. They use ANSI escape codes, theme colors, and interactive keyboard handling. Standard test runners can't see the rendered output because there's no real terminal. Pilotty solves this by:

• Spawning pi in a real PTY (with a full VT100 terminal emulator)
• Capturing screen state as structured JSON (text, cursor, elements, content hash)
• Sending keyboard input (Tab, Enter, arrows, text typing, key sequences)
• Waiting for screen changes instead of guessing sleep durations

This gives you a fully automated way to verify that your components render correctly, respond to input, and update on state changes — the things that are impossible to test with pi -p print mode.

Prerequisites

Before testing, confirm pilotty is installed:

which pilotty

If not installed, install via npm:

npm install -g pilotty

Pilotty is a Rust binary distributed as a native npm package. It requires macOS or Linux (no Windows support).

Also confirm the package loads without errors:

npm run typecheck && npm run lint

Core Testing Workflow

Every TUI test follows the same pattern:

1. Spawn pi with the package loaded in a pilotty PTY session
2. Wait for readiness — pi shows a prompt or status line when loaded
3. Trigger the TUI — invoke a slash command or tool that renders your component
4. Capture a snapshot — verify the rendered output
5. Interact — send keyboard input to exercise the component
6. Verify again — snapshot after interaction to confirm state changed correctly
7. Clean up — kill the session

Step 1: Spawn pi in a pilotty session

pilotty spawn --name tui-test --cwd /path/to/package -- pi -ne -e . --no-session

Key flags:

• --name tui-test — named session for targeting with -s tui-test
• --cwd /path/to/package — run in the package directory so -e . works
• -ne — no globally installed extensions (avoids interference)
• -e . — load only this package's extensions
• --no-session — fresh session, no session file

Always use -ne with -e . to isolate the package under test. Other extensions (like pi-mcp-adapter) can interfere with TUI rendering.

Step 2: Wait for pi to be ready

pilotty wait-for -s tui-test "[Skills]" -t 10000

Pi shows a startup info screen with [Skills], [Prompts], [Extensions], [Themes] sections when ready. Wait for any of these strings. The timeout of 10 seconds accounts for startup time.

Alternatively, use a short sleep which is more reliable across pi versions:

sleep 3
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --format text | head -2

If you see the skills list, pi is ready.

Step 3: Trigger the TUI component

For slash commands, type the command:

HASH=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
pilotty type -s tui-test "/pick"
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH" --settle 100

For tool-triggered TUIs, type a prompt that invokes the tool:

HASH=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
pilotty type -s tui-test "Call the settings tool"
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH" --settle 500

Use --settle with a value of 100-500ms for pi's TUI rendering. The TUI renders quickly once the command executes.

Step 4: Capture and verify the snapshot

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test

This returns structured JSON:

{
  "snapshot_id": 42,
  "size": { "cols": 80, "rows": 24 },
  "cursor": { "row": 5, "col": 10, "visible": true },
  "text": "full screen text content",
  "elements": [
    { "kind": "button", "row": 1, "col": 9, "width": 4, "text": "[OK]"   
  
   

For readable output during debugging:

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --format text

Step 5: Interact with the component

# Navigate with arrow keys
pilotty key -s tui-test Down
pilotty key -s tui-test Up

# Select an item
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter

# Type text into an input field
pilotty type -s tui-test "search query"

# Tab between elements
pilotty key -s tui-test Tab

# Cancel / close
pilotty key -s tui-test Escape

Always capture a hash before interaction and use --await-change after to wait for the screen to update:

HASH=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
pilotty key -s tui-test Down
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH" --settle 50

This avoids race conditions — no manual sleep guessing needed.

Step 6: Clean up

pilotty kill -s tui-test

Or stop the entire daemon:

pilotty stop

Testing Common Pi TUI Patterns

Read references/TEST_PATTERNS.md for detailed test scripts covering the most common pi TUI component patterns:

1. SelectList dialogs — verify items render, navigate, select
2. Overlays — verify overlay appears and dismisses
3. SettingsList toggles — verify toggle state changes
4. Custom editors — verify mode switching and input handling
5. Widgets — verify content appears above/below editor
6. BorderedLoader — verify spinner appears during async work

Snapshot Verification Strategies

Text content verification

Extract the text field and search for expected strings:

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.text' | grep -q "Pick an Option"

Element verification

Check for detected UI elements (buttons, inputs, toggles):

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq '.elements[] | select(.kind == "button")'

Element detection is best-effort — pilotty detects common patterns like [OK], <Cancel>, [x], [ ]. For components with custom styling, rely on text content verification instead.

Content hash for change detection

Use content_hash to verify that an action actually changed the screen:

HASH1=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
pilotty key -s tui-test Down
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH1" --settle 50
HASH2=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
# If HASH1 != HASH2, the screen changed

Plain text format for visual debugging

When you need to see what the TUI looks like (including cursor position shown as ▌):

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --format text

Key Mapping for Pi TUI

Pi's TUI components use these key interactions:

Action	Key	pilotty command
Navigate list	↑/↓	pilotty key Up / pilotty key Down
Select item	Enter	pilotty key Enter
Cancel/close	Escape	pilotty key Escape
Tab between items	Tab	pilotty key Tab
Search in SelectList	Type text	pilotty type "query"
Scroll	Page Up/Down	pilotty key PageUp / pilotty key PageDown
Toggle setting	Enter	pilotty key Enter
Abort pi	Ctrl+C	pilotty key Ctrl+C

Testing Multiple Components

When testing multiple slash commands or TUI flows, you can reuse a single session:

# Test command A
pilotty type -s tui-test "/command-a"
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter
# ... verify and dismiss ...
pilotty key -s tui-test Escape

# Test command B
pilotty type -s tui-test "/command-b"
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter
# ... verify ...

Alternatively, spawn fresh sessions for test isolation:

pilotty kill -s tui-test
pilotty spawn --name tui-test --cwd /path/to/package -- pi -ne -e . --no-session
pilotty wait-for -s tui-test "[Skills]" -t 10000

Important: Don't Send Enter Without a TUI Open

Pi treats Enter as "submit prompt" when the editor is focused. If you send pilotty key Enter before a TUI component is displayed, pi will process whatever is in the editor as a prompt — which can trigger the agent and disrupt your test session.

Only send Enter after confirming a TUI is visible via snapshot. For commands, prefer typing the full command and sending Enter once:

# Good: type command + Enter (pi processes the slash command)
pilotty type -s tui-test "/my-command"
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter

# Bad: sending random Enter keys before the TUI appears
pilotty key -s tui-test Enter  # This submits an empty prompt!

If you accidentally trigger the agent, wait for it to finish:

HASH=$(pilotty snapshot -s tui-test | jq -r '.content_hash')
pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH" --settle 3000 -t 60000

Snapshot Text vs Styled Elements

The snapshot text field contains screen content with ANSI escape codes stripped. This means ANSI-styled UI elements may not appear as expected in the text output. For example, pi's editor prompt [ ] uses styling and may show as empty space in the text field.

For verifying styled elements, use these alternatives:

• Cursor position — Check .cursor in the JSON snapshot for row, col, and visibility
• Element detection — Check .elements array for detected buttons, inputs, toggles
• Text format — Use --format text for visual debugging with cursor indicator ▌

Troubleshooting

Pi doesn't start in the PTY

Increase the wait timeout. Pi startup takes longer in a PTY:

pilotty wait-for -s tui-test "[Skills]" -t 20000

TUI doesn't appear after typing a command

Pi might still be processing. Use --await-change with a longer settle time:

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --await-change "$HASH" --settle 500 -t 10000

Snapshot shows the wrong screen

The TUI might not have finished rendering. Always wait for the content hash to change after an action. Check with text format:

pilotty snapshot -s tui-test --format text

Session not found

Sessions are cleaned up automatically when the child process exits. If pi crashed or was killed, the session is gone. List active sessions:

pilotty list-sessions

ANSI escape codes in snapshot text

The text field contains the visible text content with ANSI codes stripped. If you see garbled output, the component might be emitting raw escape sequences that pilotty's VT100 emulator doesn't fully handle. Report edge cases to the pilotty project.

Reference Files

• references/TEST_PATTERNS.md — Ready-to-use test scripts for common pi TUI component patterns