README
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tui-base
A structured, production-minded foundation for building large Charm v2 terminal applications in Go.
This project is designed for engineers who want more than a demo app: predictable architecture, consistent theme behavior, keyboard and mouse interaction patterns, and debug tooling that helps you understand message flow while you build.
Why This Exists
Building a large TUI gets hard when app state, routing, styling, and diagnostics are scattered.
tui-base provides an opinionated structure that keeps those concerns coherent:
- Router-first composition for multi-page apps.
- Shared live theme pointer propagated across components.
- Status and notification primitives for global UX.
- Inspector workflows for observing runtime behavior.
- Test- and benchmark-friendly package boundaries.
Current Capabilities
The following milestone capabilities are already implemented:
- Shared style propagation via one mutable app style pointer.
- Window title + terminal canvas foreground/background managed at router and page level.
- Keyboard + mouse navigation via Sidebar and Tabs.
- Global shortcuts for settings, navigation visibility, detailed help, and status visibility.
- Runtime navigation style switching and settings persistence.
- Settings UX with overview rows + overlay editor forms.
- Live theme preview while editing settings.
- Runtime logging configuration and level updates.
- Inspector message log with deduplication and runtime log streaming.
- Notification manager with severity, TTL, persistence, keyed action items, and history panel.
- Status bar integrations for settings and notification controls, including pending-action counts.
- Compositor-based overlays for toast/history rendering plus router-registered action prompts.
- Modern Go cleanup workflow using
modernize -fix.
Project Layout
main.go: entrypoint and app bootstrap.router/: root model and message routing.navigation/: Sidebar and Tabs components.pages/: page models (home,settings,inspector).status/: status bar and notification overlays.theme/: app style model and style helpers.notifications/: notification manager and persistence.logging/: runtime logger + subscriber fanout.keys/: global key map model.common/: shared public interfaces/types.
Quick Start
For a practical walkthrough, see docs/getting-started.md.
Architectural Notes
For durable design rationale and decisions, see docs/architecture-decisions.md.
Roadmap
The roadmap now tracks only open work. See .github/ROADMAP.md.
Local Development
Prerequisites
Install these once to match the full CI gate locally:
# Go (1.26+) - https://go.dev/dl/
# golangci-lint
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/master/install.sh | sh -s -- -b $(go env GOPATH)/bin
# shellcheck
brew install shellcheck # macOS/Linux via Homebrew
# or: apt-get install shellcheck
# markdownlint-cli2
npm install -g markdownlint-cli2
# actionlint
brew install actionlint # macOS/Linux
# or: go install github.com/rhysd/actionlint/cmd/actionlint@latest
# govulncheck
go install golang.org/x/vuln/cmd/govulncheck@latest
- Build baseline:
go build -o tui_base_test_build.exe . && rm tui_base_test_build.exe
- Run tests:
go test ./... -v
- Run race tests:
go test -race ./... -v
- Run lint:
GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 golangci-lint run ./...GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 golangci-lint run ./...
- Run full local verification (hook-equivalent):
bash tools/local_verify.sh
Documentation
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There is no documentation for this package.
Source Files
Directories
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| Path | Synopsis |
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Package config defines the types that allow any Model to contribute configurable fields to the application's Settings page.
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Package config defines the types that allow any Model to contribute configurable fields to the application's Settings page. |
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Package datepicker provides a bubble tea component for viewing and selecting a date from a monthly view.
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Package datepicker provides a bubble tea component for viewing and selecting a date from a monthly view. |
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Package geom provides small screen-geometry primitives shared across the framework and its consumers.
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Package geom provides small screen-geometry primitives shared across the framework and its consumers. |
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Package notifications provides a severity-aware notification manager with toast display, history, and optional JSON persistence.
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Package notifications provides a severity-aware notification manager with toast display, history, and optional JSON persistence. |
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Package overlay provides shared overlay primitives used by the router's built-in overlays and by page models (settings, dashboard) that manage their own centered form dialogs.
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Package overlay provides shared overlay primitives used by the router's built-in overlays and by page models (settings, dashboard) that manage their own centered form dialogs. |
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Package page provides a small embeddable base for tui-base pages, removing the colors/size boilerplate every page would otherwise repeat.
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Package page provides a small embeddable base for tui-base pages, removing the colors/size boilerplate every page would otherwise repeat. |
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pages
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Package table is a themed, interactive data table widget for tui-base apps.
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Package table is a themed, interactive data table widget for tui-base apps. |
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Package testutil provides shared test helpers for layout correctness tests across tui-base and applications built on it.
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Package testutil provides shared test helpers for layout correctness tests across tui-base and applications built on it. |
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Package theme builds the application's visual styling by combining three orthogonal axes that the end user can choose independently:
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Package theme builds the application's visual styling by combining three orthogonal axes that the end user can choose independently: |
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