pi lanes

pi-lanes is a lane-based workflow, CLI, and dashboard for pi.

It helps you split ongoing work into named lanes, each with its own:

• repo association
• lane context
• runtime state
• event history
• dashboard view

What it does

• create and manage lanes from the CLI
• start a lane in pi with lane-aware onboarding
• keep lane context and runtime state in plain files
• expose lane state to a local dashboard
• send messages into active lane sessions from the dashboard
• show recent conversation, live assistant output, and lane events

Core ideas

• Lane: a named unit of work
• Context: the saved notes and references for that lane
• Runtime state: what the lane is doing right now
• Events: recent lane activity useful for dashboard review

Install

Local development

npm install
npm link

Global install

npm install -g .

This installs:

• pi-lane
• pi-lane-start

Quick start

Create a lane from inside a repo:

pi-lane new my-lane

Or point at a repo explicitly:

pi-lane new my-lane --repo /path/to/repo

Start the lane:

pi-lane-start my-lane

Continue an existing saved pi session instead of starting fresh:

pi-lane-start my-lane --continue

Inspect lanes:

pi-lane list
pi-lane show my-lane

Delete a lane:

pi-lane delete my-lane
pi-lane delete my-lane --yes

Onboarding

A brand-new lane starts with a lightweight onboarding conversation.

Pi helps capture:

• what the lane is for
• the current desired outcome
• useful references, files, commands, or links
• constraints and guardrails
• the next concrete step worth capturing

Dashboard

Build the dashboard:

npm run dashboard:build

Run the backend server:

pi-lane dashboard serve --port 4310

For frontend development with hot reload:

npm run dashboard:dev:full

Then open:

• http://127.0.0.1:4311 for Vite dev
• http://127.0.0.1:4310 for the built dashboard backend

Storage

Lane data lives by default in:

~/.config/pi-lanes/

Each lane gets its own directory:

~/.config/pi-lanes/lanes/<lane-id>/

Important files:

• context.md
• state/runtime.json
• state/events.json

Repo layout

• bin/ — CLI entrypoints
• src/ — application source
• dashboard-app/ — dashboard frontend source
• dashboard/ — built dashboard assets
• extensions/ — pi extensions
• skills/ — pi skills used by lane sessions
• docs/ — supporting docs
• test/ — tests

Related docs

• docs/pi-skills-and-extensions.md