Context browser

What it shows

The Context Browser opens one model request and shows what the model received, element by element: each prompt section, each tool’s schema, each message, each reply, and each tool result beside the call that produced it. Pick an element to read it exactly as it was sent.

Beside it, Context Events lists what changed the context other than the conversation, and File Activity lists what pi’s file tools touched.

How to open it

• On the Context tab, pick a bar in Trend, then Open in browser.
• Open next request on the Now card opens the request that has not been sent yet.
• Once it is open, the arrows and the request picker move between requests.

What it looks like

To see it: open a thread from the rail, then choose the Context tab at the top of the thread, then choose model demo/claude-opus-4-1.

1. The request picker. Each request shows its prompt and pi’s estimate.
2. What entered since the request before. In a category, a row marked + new is one of them.
3. A switch event in Context Events: the model changed here.
4. File Activity: every read, write and search by pi’s file tools, and the ones that failed.

To see it: open a thread from the rail, then choose the Context tab at the top of the thread, then choose model demo/claude-opus-4-1, then choose tool results, then choose read src/config.ts.

1. The element: the read of src/config.ts, under tool results. The panel shows the call’s arguments, then the result as the model received it.
2. raw or markdown: the text as sent, or rendered.

What to look for

Open the request after a model switch. In the thread above, the request after the switch says 2 entered since request 8, yet on the Stats tab it is the most expensive turn. Context Events has the reason: a switch event at that request, to claude-opus-4-1. The context was the same; the cache was not.

Context Events shows these kinds of event: inject (a section or message added to the context), compact, prune (part of the context edited out), switch (the model or the thinking level) and mode. The figure on an event is the change in pi’s estimate across it. Click an event to open the first request it reached.

File Activity follows the bar you pick in Trend, so it shows the files touched up to that request. Above, the read of .env is marked failed: the guard refused it. The grep and cat pi ran in the shell are not listed at all (see below). Click a row to open its tool result.

What it doesn’t do

• File Activity covers pi’s file tools only: read, write, edit, grep, find and ls. A file touched through bash is not listed, because a shell command names no file Enso can trust.
• The sizes are pi’s estimate. The provider’s count for the whole request is in the summary line, and is not split.
• An image in a request shows as a preview, and as a note instead of a preview when it is too large.

Go deeper

• Context: the tab this opens from.
• Prompt cache architecture: why a switch costs more than its content.
• HTTP routes: GET /api/threads/:threadId/context/:request, which serves each request.
• Observation seam.