Using TUI Designer

Overview

This meta-skill routes you to the right TUI design skills based on your situation. Load this skill when you need terminal-UI expertise but aren't sure which specific sheet to use.

Core Principle: A TUI is a user interface, not a CLI with cursor tricks. The terminal is a hostile, capability-variable canvas shared with the user's shell — and a TUI that flickers, lags on every keystroke, eats input, or leaves a wrecked terminal behind on crash is a UX failure, not just a bug. Match your situation to the appropriate sheet, load only what you need.

Framework-agnostic: These sheets teach principles, then illustrate each with whichever framework shows it best — ratatui (Rust), Textual + Rich (Python), Bubble Tea (Go), Ink (JS/React), ncurses/notcurses. The discipline transfers; the API does not. Bring your own stack.

When to Use

Load this skill when:

• Starting any TUI design, build, or review task
• User mentions: "TUI", "terminal app", "terminal UI", "full-screen terminal", "ratatui", "Textual", "Rich", "Bubble Tea", "Ink", "ncurses", "notcurses", "curses", "alternate screen", "raw mode"
• User describes terminal-app symptoms: "screen flickers", "it's laggy on keypress", "my terminal is broken after it crashes", "colors look wrong over SSH", "mouse doesn't work", "resize breaks the layout", "how do I test a TUI"
• You need to critique or review an existing terminal interface
• You need to design or build a new terminal interface or widget