Terminal Testing Skill

Drive interactive terminal programs over a PTY using the Terminal DevTools CLI. Spawn a shell / REPL / TUI attached to a pseudo-terminal, type into it, synchronize on its output, and read what it produced — the way a human (or tmux) would.

When to Use

This skill activates when:

• User wants to test or automate a CLI, REPL, or full-screen TUI
• User needs a program to run on a real TTY (colors, readline, password prompts, ncurses UIs)
• User wants to type commands/keystrokes into an interactive program and assert on its output
• User wants a one-shot command's full output + exit code
• User mentions a PTY, pseudo-terminal, shell session, expect-style automation, or driving vim/psql/python

The platform spawns the process itself — it does not attach to a pre-existing external process. For web pages use browser-testing; for server APIs use backend-testing; for Node.js process debugging use the node CLI.

Synchronization model (wait, don't sleep)

There is no assert tool and no fixed-delay step. After sending input, block on expected output with sync wait-for (regex) or sync wait-for-idle (output went quiet) before sending more input or reading. Chain incremental reads by passing the returned cursor as --since to the next content capture / sync wait-for, so you only ever see new output. Guessing with sleeps is unreliable; matching on output is not.