tui-design

tui-design is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from gfargo/tui-design-skill. It costs 135 tokens per session (2,333 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A design guide for terminal user interfaces (TUIs), meaning interactive programs that run in a text terminal, and command-line tools. It covers layouts, navigation, prompts, output, and several language ecosystems.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design or review dashboards, menus, prompts, REPLs, command-line commands, keyboard controls, terminal layouts, and accessibility behavior.
Why use it?
It helps make terminal software understandable and predictable despite the limits of text-based screens. The guide organizes advice by the language, framework, and interaction problem involved.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for Claude Code and Codex: shipped in a Claude Code plugin, but also agents/openai.yaml present.

Part of the tui-design plugin — 1 skill shipped together

Good fit Use it to design or review dashboards, menus, prompts, REPLs, command-line commands, keyboard controls, terminal layouts, and accessibility behavior.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add gfargo/tui-design-skill --skill tui-design
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/gfargo/tui-design-skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install tui-design, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for tui-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for tui-design

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/gfargo/tui-design-skill/tui-design.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 135 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,333 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00135 $0.02333
Opus 5 $0.00068 $0.01167
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00467
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00233

Measured 9d ago against content hash 885b2c5afc5d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

tui-design scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

plugins/tui-design/skills/tui-design/SKILL.md · 140 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 140 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

TUI & CLI Design

Design terminal software that is calm, predictable, fast, and honest about the medium. Treat this file as the workflow and cross-cutting contract. Load detailed guidance from the one reference that owns it instead of reconstructing or repeating it here.

Route before answering

Need Authoritative reference
Go, Bubble Tea, Lipgloss, Bubbles, tview, gocui references/ecosystem-go.md
Rust, Ratatui, crossterm, Cursive references/ecosystem-rust.md
Python, Textual, Rich, prompt_toolkit, urwid references/ecosystem-python.md
TypeScript/JavaScript, Ink, OpenTUI, Clack, Inquirer references/ecosystem-typescript.md
One-shot commands, arguments, streams, exit codes, automation references/cli-basics.md
Layouts, buffers, borders, hierarchy, color, density, responsive behavior, tables, themes, accessibility references/visual-patterns.md
Keys, focus, navigation, modes, forms, mouse, confirmation, undo, OSC features references/interaction-patterns.md
Case studies: lazygit, k9s, fzf, btop, helix, yazi, atuin references/exemplar-apps.md
Screenshots or demo recordings Use the separate vhs-cli-demos skill

Load only the references the task needs. When the prompt names a framework or ecosystem, always load its ecosystem reference before making API, lifecycle, implementation, or testing claims. Ecosystem references own those specifics. The visual and interaction references own their domains for every ecosystem. Exemplar apps are evidence and inspiration, not substitutes for the pattern references.

If no language is named, ask only when ecosystem choice would materially change the answer or implementation. Otherwise state a reasonable recommendation and proceed: Go for polished single binaries, Rust for control and reliability, Python for rapid product work, and TypeScript when React or npm distribution is already an advantage.

Classify the product first

Choose the output contract before choosing a framework or layout:

Read the full file on GitHub · 140 lines

Files

What ships with it

9 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 9d ago First seen · 140 lines · 135 tokens per session scan A 885b2c5afc5d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

tui-design is a skill published in the GitHub repository gfargo/tui-design-skill (27 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 135 tokens to every session and 2,333 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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