pickbrain

A search tool for recalling previous Pi coding sessions, with optional searches across Claude Code, Codex, and Slack conversations.

In plain words
What is it for?
Searching Pi history by meaning, examining selected session turns, and expanding the search to other coding agents or Slack when requested.
Why use it?
It helps recover earlier decisions, fixes, and explanations without manually opening old sessions one by one.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/dropbox/witchcraft/pickbrain-pi
Any agent
npx skills add dropbox/witchcraft --skill pickbrain-pi
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dropbox/witchcraft

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 679 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00056 $0.00679
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00340
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00136
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00068

Measured 3d ago against content hash c17a8eed83c1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pickbrain scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/pickbrain-pi/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Pickbrain — Recall for Pi

Search previous Pi sessions semantically and use the results to answer the user with citations/excerpts. Pickbrain can also search Claude Code, Codex, and Slack when explicitly requested, but in Pi it should default to Pi history.

Preferred Pi Usage

If the pickbrain_search tool is available, use it first. It automatically:

  • defaults to type: "pi"
  • passes the current Pi session to pickbrain
  • suppresses ingest progress noise
  • limits results to a small useful set unless asked otherwise

Examples:

  • Search Pi history: { "query": "auth middleware fix" }
  • Search current Pi session: { "query": "install target", "current": true }
  • Exclude current Pi session: { "query": "dropbox witchcraft", "excludeCurrent": true }
  • Search all coding agents: { "query": "extension api", "type": "pi,claude,codex" }
  • Search everything, including Slack: { "query": "launch plan", "allSources": true }
  • Dump a session: { "dump": "<session-id>", "turns": "2-4" }

Slash Command

The Pi extension also registers:

/pickbrain <query>

This searches Pi sessions by default. Pass flags to override:

/pickbrain --type pi,claude,codex auth middleware
/pickbrain --dump <session-id> --turns 2-4

Bash Fallback

If the tool is unavailable, run pickbrain via Bash:

pickbrain -q --type pi "$ARGUMENTS"

Pickbrain automatically ingests new sessions before each search. First run can take longer while building the local database.

Interpreting Results

Each result includes:

  • timestamp and project directory
  • source: usually pi, or claude, codex, slack if requested
  • session ID and turn number
  • relevant matching text

Present results as a concise summary and quote the most relevant excerpts. To dig deeper:

pickbrain -q --dump <session-id> --turns <start>-<end>

Useful CLI Filters

pickbrain -q --type pi "<query>"       # only Pi sessions
pickbrain -q --current "<query>"       # current calling session when detectable
pickbrain -q --exclude-current "<query>"
pickbrain -q --session <session-id> "<query>"
pickbrain -q --since 7d "<query>"
pickbrain -q -n 20 "<query>"

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 84 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A c17a8eed83c1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pickbrain is a skill published in the GitHub repository dropbox/witchcraft (507 stars, last pushed 14d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 679 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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