Checklist

Make an agent write its plan before it changes anything, and follow that plan from the sidebar without opening the agent.

• Where: after you install pi-checklist (Packages), the plan is a line on the agent in the sidebar.
• Not this: not a canvas pin or note. Optional package — without it, no tool, no gate, no sidebar line.

pi-checklist is an optional pi package — an extension, not part of PiCode core. The tool and the rule live in the package; PiCode only renders what the agent reports and stores the obligation level you pick per agent.

Install packages/pi-checklist from the PiCode repository. Guide for install targets: Packages.

pi install /path/to/picode/packages/pi-checklist

With it, the agent has a checklist tool and a rule: before its first edit, write or shell command in a task, it writes 2–8 steps and marks the one it starts. Until it does, changes are refused and the refusal tells it what to call. As steps finish it updates the list.

Where it runs

	What you get
Pi TUI (terminal)	The tool, the rule and the step card in your own terminal
PiCode chat	The same tool and rule, plus the sidebar line and the step cards
PiCode core	The surfaces only: the sidebar line, the chat cards, the phone row, and the per-agent Level setting that the package reads

The split runs the other way than usual here: the package holds the behavior, PiCode holds the mirrors. The agent posts its plan to PiCode; delete the package and the mirrors have nothing to show.

The mirrors cover agent CLI terminals too: a pi you launch in a PiCode terminal reports its plan under that terminal, so the terminal's sidebar card shows the same line a managed agent's card does. The terminal pane is the TUI itself — it already draws the step card, so PiCode does not repeat it above the pane. Other CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Hermes Agent, OpenCode) have no checklist package, so their terminals never show a line.

What you see

• Sidebar: one line under the agent — (2/4) the step it is on. When a plan is finished it reads (4/4). Nothing known, and a task without a plan, shows no line at all (ADR-0092). Agent CLI terminal cards carry the same line.
• Chat: each checklist call is a card with every step — ☐ pending, ◐ in progress, ☑ done.
• Phone: the agent row's second line is the current step.

Level, per agent

Agent settings → Checklist:

Level	Meaning
Before changes (default)	a plan before the first change; a question or a read-only answer needs none
Always	every task, read-only answers too — a turn without a plan gets a reminder, up to three
Never	the tool stays, nothing is required

A read-only agent is never asked: it cannot change anything. The level travels to the package as an environment variable on the agent's process; a plain pi outside PiCode gets the default (before changes).

Notes

• Each new prompt is a new task: the agent writes or updates the plan again before its next change. Small fixes get a one-line plan.
• The plan lives in the agent's session; a resume or a fork keeps it.
• There is no config file — the obligation level in agent settings is the only knob.