The extension failed to load outright on older pi installs:
Failed to load extension ".../mcpctl-pi.ts":
Cannot find module '@earendil-works/pi-ai'
pi doesn't resolve an extension's bare specifiers the ordinary way — it
hands jiti a hard-coded alias table built from its own dependencies, and
that table differs between pi distributions. `@earendil-works/pi-coding-
agent` (0.84.1) aliases both the `@earendil-works/*` and legacy
`@mariozechner/*` names; `@mariozechner/pi-coding-agent` (0.73.1) aliases
only the old ones. Neither resolves the other's namespace, so a single
import outside the intersection takes the whole extension down: every
tool, the /mcpctl command, and the status line, all gone.
The only thing we used from pi-ai was `StringEnum`, a six-line wrapper
over `Type.Unsafe`. Inlined as a local `stringEnum` with byte-identical
output, so `typebox` — aliased by every published pi — is now the sole
bare runtime import. The call site also passes `description` through,
which the pi-ai version was silently dropping.
Guarded in tests/config/pi-extension-embed.test.ts: any runtime import in
the embedded sources that isn't `node:`, relative, or typebox now fails.
Verified against both installs with the same active project: 0.73.1
reproduced the error verbatim before the change and loads cleanly after,
and 0.84.1 keeps registering the gate tool exactly as before.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014tsRTqhEC7YYYYaP3cBqo8
