pi-paste-image

Paste clipboard images into your pi conversations.

What it does

When you copy an image to your clipboard (screenshot, copied image, etc.), this extension:

1. Saves it to a temp file (%TEMP%\pi_clipboard_<timestamp>.png)
2. Inserts the file path into your editor
3. You send the message → pi's read tool opens the image so the LLM can see it

Installation

pi install git:github.com/penniey/pi-paste-image

Or install from a local path:

pi install ./pi-paste-image

Usage

• Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+V (uses Alt instead of Shift to avoid terminal paste conflict)
• Command: /paste-image

Both methods append the image file path to whatever text you already have in the editor, so you can type your question around it:

What do you think about this? C:\Users\hugo2\AppData\Local\Temp\pi_clipboard_12345.png

Why not Ctrl+V? Terminals intercept Ctrl+V at a level below pi for raw text paste. When the clipboard contains an image, terminals paste nothing or garbled bytes. A TUI app can't override this, so we use Ctrl+Alt+V instead.

Platform support

• Windows: Uses PowerShell + .NET System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard (built-in, no dependencies)
• macOS and Linux support can be added — see the source for the hooks.

How it works

The extension runs a PowerShell script (via -EncodedCommand to avoid quoting issues) that:

1. Loads the .NET clipboard assemblies (System.Windows.Forms, System.Drawing)
2. Extracts the image via [System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard]::GetImage()
3. Saves it as PNG to %TEMP%
4. Returns the file path to Node.js, which inserts it into the pi editor

The temp file persists until Windows cleans it up, giving pi's read tool time to open it.