Charm Tui Motion Observability

Charm TUI Motion And Observability

Overview

Use this when the terminal UI needs to feel responsive and diagnosable. Motion should clarify state changes; logging should help developers and operators without corrupting the rendered terminal surface.

Workflow

1. Read references/motion-logs-patterns.md before adding animation loops or logging.
2. Decide whether motion is necessary. Prefer Bubbles spinner/progress for common loading and progress states.
3. Use Harmonica for spring movement only when natural motion improves comprehension.
4. Decide where logs go before adding them. Full-screen TUIs should usually log to a file, debug pane, or disabled-by-default logger.
5. Add structured fields to logs for user action, screen, session, operation, and error.
6. Verify animation stops, logs avoid secrets, and the TUI output remains clean.

Motion Rules

• Use motion for progress, focus transition, reveal/hide, or spatial continuity.
• Keep animations short and interruptible.
• Store animation state in the model and advance it through tick messages or component commands.
• Disable or simplify motion in tests and non-interactive output.
• Do not animate critical information that must be read immediately.

Logging Rules

• Use Charm Log for human-readable structured logs.
• Prefer per-session or per-component loggers over global logging in reusable packages.
• Write debug logs away from stdout/stderr while Bubble Tea owns the terminal.
• Use levels consistently: debug for internal state, info for lifecycle, warn for recoverable anomalies, error for failed operations.
• Include errors as structured fields.

Avoid

• Avoid unbounded tick loops after a screen is closed.
• Avoid motion that changes layout dimensions every frame and causes text jitter.
• Avoid logging keystrokes, tokens, passwords, private keys, or raw terminal contents.
• Avoid Fatal in library code or recoverable TUI paths because it exits the process.
• Avoid using logs as user-facing error messages.

Verification

• Run tests for tick/update transitions and log configuration helpers.
• Manually verify animation start, completion, interruption, resize, and screen switch.
• Confirm logs are present at the configured level and absent below it.
• Confirm full-screen rendering is not corrupted by log output.
• Confirm logs do not contain secrets or sensitive user input.

References

• references/motion-logs-patterns.md: Harmonica spring pattern, Bubble Tea tick integration, Charm Log configuration, and observability checklist.