thurbox-ui

Editing the thurbox interface

Managed by thurbox extension install — see Updating this skill at the bottom before editing it.

thurbox's interface has no built-in screen underneath. Every pane is a Lua file in one directory, the kernel reads that directory at startup, and saving a file reloads it. Changing the TUI means editing Lua there — never Rust, and never the repository this session happens to be sitting in.

First: find the directory

The interface is not in the current repo. It is a config directory of the user's, so it is almost always outside this session's worktree:

thurbox-cli plugin dir     # the directory in force, and which rule chose it

Two rules pick it: THURBOX_UI_DIR if set, otherwise the user's own copy — ~/.config/thurbox/ui, or ~/.config/thurbox-dev/ui for a dev build. Run the command; do not assume which. If you cannot write outside this session's worktree, say so and ask for that path to be allowed — do not edit something else instead and report it as done.

A thurbox checkout's ui/ is not the live interface. Editing ui/ inside a clone of the thurbox repository changes nothing on screen unless THURBOX_UI_DIR points at it (just tui-ui in that repo does exactly that). If the user wants their running thurbox changed, the destination is plugin dir's answer. If they want the shipped interface changed, it is the checkout, and that is a code change with a pull request behind it — ask which they mean when both are plausible.

Then: read the directory's own docs

The directory ships the reference, and it is versioned with the binary the user is running, so it is more current than anything you remember:

UI="$(thurbox-cli plugin dir --text | head -1)"   # or: plugin dir --json | jq -r .dir
cat "$UI/AGENTS.md"    # the operational half — what is easy to get wrong
cat "$UI/README.md"    # the reference — node kinds, the API, the traps
cat "$UI/layout.lua"   # the arrangement — which slots exist and where
ls "$UI/plugins" "$UI/lib"