Tui Master

This skill should be used when the user asks about TUI input handling, raw mode, cbreak mode, terminal keyboard parsing, Esc vs Alt ambiguity, Ctrl-C, shortcuts, focus management, mouse events, scroll wheel, bracketed paste, paste safety, command palettes, forms, text editing, resize events, or keybinding design. PROACTIVELY activate for: raw mode, keyboard input, keybindings, mouse support, paste handling, focus model, terminal forms, text input, vim/emacs-style shortcuts, input conflicts, and cross-platform Windows/macOS/Linux input behavior. Provides: input architecture, shortcut rules, focus patterns, paste/mouse safety, and failure-mode triage.

This skill should be used when the user asks to design, create, choose, modernize, or review a terminal UI, text user interface, curses app, dashboard, wizard, REPL shell, prompt flow, or CLI with interactive screens. PROACTIVELY activate for: TUI architecture, terminal-ui design, framework selection, curses vs modern framework, full-screen vs inline UI, app state modeling, widget composition, command palette, keyboard-first workflow, terminal dashboard, interactive CLI UX, and cross-platform terminal product planning. Provides: architecture patterns, framework decision rules, UX guardrails, scope boundaries, and production readiness checklists.

This skill should be used when the user asks for implementation recipes, examples, migration guidance, troubleshooting, or best practices for specific TUI frameworks and libraries: Rust Ratatui/Crossterm/Termion/Cursive, Python Textual/Rich/prompt_toolkit/curses/Urwid/asciimatics, Go Bubble Tea/Lip Gloss/Bubbles/tview/tcell/termui/gocui, Node Ink/Blessed/Inquirer/Prompts, .NET Terminal.Gui/Spectre.Console, C/C++ ncurses/notcurses/FTXUI, Zig vaxis, and SwiftTUI. PROACTIVELY activate for: framework-specific app structure, cleanup, testing, widgets, migration, library comparison, framework troubleshooting, API gotchas, and porting between TUI frameworks. Provides: framework defaults, gotchas, testing hooks, and selection recipes.

This skill should be used when the user asks to make a terminal UI beautiful, polished, readable, premium, modern, branded, or visually distinctive; improve visual hierarchy, spacing, typography, borders, color palettes, charts, progress displays, icons, prompts, forms, dashboards, or framework styling. PROACTIVELY activate for: TUI visual design, aesthetic polish, layout composition, terminal typography, color systems, box drawing, chart styling, animation, glyph/icon usage, prompt styling, design critique, visual anti-patterns, and framework-specific styling guidance. Provides: terminal design principles, polish checklists, visual recipes, and accessibility-aware aesthetics.

This skill should be used when the user asks about ANSI, VT100, VT220, ECMA-48, ISO 6429, xterm control sequences, terminal capability detection, terminfo, environment variables, alternate screen protocols, SGR colors, OSC, CSI, DCS, terminal graphics, Windows virtual terminal processing, ConPTY, tmux/screen, SSH, or escape-sequence compatibility. PROACTIVELY activate for: escape sequences, terminal standards, capability negotiation, raw ANSI output, xterm protocols, alternate screen, color support, OSC 8 links, OSC 52 clipboard, Kitty/iTerm2 protocols, sixel, and cross-terminal fallback design. Provides: safe protocol rules, negotiation checklists, compatibility warnings, and reference tables.

Use this skill when a terminal UI freezes, hangs, shows a blank screen, corrupts terminal state, leaves raw mode stuck, stops responding to input, garbles output, breaks colors/cursor state, fails over SSH/tmux/screen, behaves differently on Windows/ConPTY, or needs deep root-cause analysis for subtle terminal failure modes. PROACTIVELY activate for: TUI freeze, terminal hang, blank TUI, raw mode stuck, stdin paused, no input events, alternate screen stuck, mouse mode stuck, bracketed paste markers, garbled terminal output, corrupted cursor/colors, partial renders, resize races, terminal state cleanup bugs, npm run tui froze, and debugging terminal gotchas. Provides: freeze/hang diagnosis, terminal recovery, startup and cleanup lifecycle checks, platform triage, and fix patterns.

This skill should be used when the user asks to test, debug, snapshot, validate, reproduce, or automate terminal UIs, curses apps, raw ANSI output, PTY-driven interactions, virtual terminal emulators, ConPTY behavior, resize tests, keyboard/mouse/paste tests, or flaky terminal snapshots. PROACTIVELY activate for: TUI testing, snapshot tests, golden files, pty integration tests, pseudo-terminal automation, ConPTY, Pexpect, node-pty, vt emulators, Textual Pilot, Ratatui snapshots, Bubble Tea tests, terminal debug logs, and CI failures. Provides: layered test strategy, deterministic snapshot rules, PTY/ConPTY patterns, debugging playbooks, and flake prevention.

This skill should be used when the user asks about terminal emulator compatibility, operating-system differences, tmux/screen/Zellij, SSH/remote terminals, Windows ConPTY/classic console/Windows Terminal, Unix PTYs, macOS Terminal/iTerm2, Kitty/Alacritty/WezTerm/foot/GNOME Terminal/Konsole, terminal feature matrices, escape-sequence passthrough, latency, resize propagation, or graceful degradation. PROACTIVELY activate for: compatibility audits, emulator bugs, remote TUI performance, multiplexer passthrough. Provides: support matrices, platform caveats, and fallback rules.

This skill should be used when the user asks about Unicode rendering, wcwidth, grapheme clusters, emoji, combining marks, East Asian width, BiDi text, box drawing, Nerd Fonts, color themes, truecolor, 256-color fallback, NO_COLOR, contrast, accessibility, screen-reader behavior, keyboard access, reduced motion, or non-TUI fallbacks. PROACTIVELY activate for: Unicode width bugs, misaligned tables, emoji layout, ANSI-aware string measurement, color accessibility, screen-reader friendly CLI design, plain output mode, ASCII fallback, and terminal theme support. Provides: text measurement rules, color/fallback policy, accessibility checklist, and failure-mode fixes.

This skill should be used when the user asks to implement, optimize, debug, or review TUI rendering, layout, repainting, flicker, frame buffers, diff rendering, terminal resize behavior, alternate screen lifecycle, scrollback, viewports, tables, dashboards, progress displays, or performance over SSH/tmux. PROACTIVELY activate for: rendering performance, layout bugs, flicker, alternate screen cleanup, resize handling, terminal dashboards, frame pacing, virtual DOM/cell buffers, double buffering, dirty regions, scroll regions, long-running tasks, and high-frequency updates. Provides: render-loop rules, layout patterns, performance budgets, lifecycle cleanup checks, and failure triage.

This skill should be used when the user asks about TUI widgets, forms, dialogs, tables, trees, charts, command palettes, split panes, scrollbars, validation, state management, Elm/MVU architecture, async message passing, configuration, packaging, distribution, terminal security, escape-sequence injection, paste sanitization, or production hardening. PROACTIVELY activate for: widget design, validation, virtual scrolling, config/keybinding files, XDG paths, packaging, secure terminal output, and release readiness. Provides: widget contracts, state patterns, config, security, and distribution checklists.