Tauren

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Architecture ​

Tauren is a VS Code extension with a native sidebar-style webview UI. It hosts the Pi coding agent through the bundled Pi SDK runtime and keeps transport details behind Tauren's own client contracts.

High-level shape ​

text
VS Code extension host
├─ Tauren provider/controller
├─ Pi SDK client bridge
├─ session, diff, metadata, prompt, and settings services
└─ webview HTML + bundled browser code

The extension host owns VS Code integration. The browser webview owns interaction rendering. Pi owns agent runtime behavior.

Extension shell ​

src/extension.ts is intentionally small. It activates commands and views, then delegates real work to the provider and controller layers.

package.json defines:

  • contributed commands,
  • the Tauren Activity Bar view,
  • configuration settings,
  • keybindings,
  • build and test scripts.

Provider and controller ​

src/taurenChatViewProvider.ts owns VS Code webview/provider integration:

  • focus and visibility,
  • webview lifecycle,
  • workspace cwd,
  • notifications,
  • Tauren session-manager lifecycle.

src/taurenChatController.ts owns chat orchestration. Supporting controller code under src/controller/ handles parsing, type guards, error classification, transcript formatting, local slash commands, Pi lifecycle, and event handling.

Webview ​

Browser code lives under src/webview and bundles to resources/webview/chat.js.

The extension host composes webview HTML in src/sidebar/chatWebview.ts; static sidebar CSS lives in src/sidebar/chatWebviewStyles.ts and src/sidebar/styles/.

Sessions ​

Tauren keeps session state separate from VS Code and Pi process details. src/chat/chatSession.ts is pure in-memory transcript/session state.

Open-session coordination lives in src/sessions/taurenSessionManager.ts, with supporting session view, history, formatting, and client-action helpers under src/sessions/.

Pi transport ​

Tauren uses the bundled Pi SDK runtime. SDK loading, event mapping, and bridge code live under src/sdk/ and src/pi/.

Do not reintroduce pi --mode rpc for the main chat UI. The SDK transport is the supported architecture.

Diff lifecycle ​

Session diff behavior lives under src/diff/. Tauren tracks session-specific changes rather than using Git as the sidebar diff source.

Build outputs ​

  • Extension host TypeScript compiles to out/.
  • Browser webview bundle outputs to resources/webview/chat.js.
  • SDK runtime bundle outputs to out/sdk/piSdkBundle.mjs and runtime assets under resources/pi-sdk-runtime/.
  • Documentation builds to docs/.vitepress/dist/, which is ignored.

Design rule ​

Keep ownership boundaries clear. Extension-host code should own VS Code integration, browser code should own DOM interaction, and Pi should remain the source of truth for agent runtime behavior.