A development guide for OpenTUI, a toolkit for building text-based user interfaces that run in a terminal. It covers the Core, React, and Solid APIs, including layout, keyboard input, animation, and testing.

Use it to create terminal interface projects, build components and layouts, handle keyboard shortcuts, add animations, and test the result.

It helps avoid common setup and implementation mistakes when building terminal applications with OpenTUI.

opentui — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by msmps/opentui-skill

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 msmps/opentui-skill --skill opentui

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/msmps/opentui-skill

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,376 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

Socket pass 14 Sept 2026
Snyk pass 14 Sept 2026

How audits are shown

Origin 86% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00045	$0.02376
Opus 5.5	$0.00018	$0.00950
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00009	$0.00475
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00238

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 22c8407a51e5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

opentui 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 2mo 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

This is a copy

86% identical to opentui — 52 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skill/opentui/SKILL.md · 235 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 235 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenTUI Platform Skill

Consolidated skill for building terminal user interfaces with OpenTUI. Use decision trees below to find the right framework and components, then load detailed references.

Critical Rules

Follow these rules in all OpenTUI code:

Use create-tui for new projects. See framework REFERENCE.md quick starts.
create-tui options must come before arguments. bunx create-tui -t react my-app works, bunx create-tui my-app -t react does NOT.
Never call process.exit() directly. Use renderer.destroy() (see core/gotchas.md).
Text styling requires nested tags in React/Solid. Use modifier elements, not props (see components/text-display.md).

How to Use This Skill

Reference File Structure

Framework references follow a 5-file pattern. Cross-cutting concepts are single-file guides.

Each framework in ./references/<framework>/ contains:

File	Purpose	When to Read
`REFERENCE.md`	Overview, when to use, quick start	Always read first
`api.md`	Runtime API, components, hooks	Writing code
`configuration.md`	Setup, tsconfig, bundling	Configuring a project
`patterns.md`	Common patterns, best practices	Implementation guidance
`gotchas.md`	Pitfalls, limitations, debugging	Troubleshooting

Cross-cutting concepts in ./references/<concept>/ have REFERENCE.md as the entry point.

Reading Order

Start with REFERENCE.md for your chosen framework
Then read additional files relevant to your task:
- Building components -> api.md + components/<category>.md
- Setting up project -> configuration.md
- Layout/positioning -> layout/REFERENCE.md
- Keyboard/input handling -> keyboard/REFERENCE.md
- Layered keybindings/commands -> keymap/REFERENCE.md
- Animations -> animation/REFERENCE.md
- Troubleshooting -> gotchas.md + testing/REFERENCE.md

Example Paths

./references/react/REFERENCE.md           # Start here for React
./references/react/api.md              # React components and hooks
./references/solid/configuration.md    # Solid project setup
./references/components/inputs.md      # Input, Textarea, Select docs
./references/core/gotchas.md           # Core debugging tips

Read the full file on GitHub · 235 lines

Files

What ships with it

26 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.

2mo ago First seen · 235 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 22c8407a51e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

opentui is a skill published in the GitHub repository msmps/opentui-skill (228 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 2,376 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 86% identical to opentui, differing in 52 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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