clidevkit 1.0.0

A framework for building production-ready CLI apps and Terminal UIs with minimal code.

clidev

clidev is a Python framework for building production-ready Command Line Applications (CLI) and Terminal User Interfaces (TUI) with minimal code.

Unlike traditional CLI libraries that only parse arguments, clidev gives you a complete framework for interactive terminal apps — menus, forms, workflows, dashboards, state management, command execution, navigation, and event-driven logic — so you don't have to hand-write input loops, menu rendering, or terminal state machines.

Think of it as the Flutter/React of terminal applications: you describe what your app looks like and does, clidev handles the rendering loop.

Built on top of rich for terminal rendering and questionary for interactive prompts.

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Installation

pip install -e .

(This installs clidev from this repo in editable mode, along with its dependencies: rich, questionary, pydantic, click, PyYAML, toml.)

Quick start

from clidev import App

app = App("My App")

home = app.menu("Home")
home.option("Say Hello", lambda: app.success("Hello!"))
home.option("Exit", app.exit)

app.run()

Or scaffold a brand-new project with the bundled CLI:

clidev new myproject
cd myproject
python app.py

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Module guide

App (clidev/app.py)

The core object. Wires together state, storage, routing, events, plugins, theming, and every UI widget factory.

from clidev import App

app = App("Developer Toolkit", theme="dark", storage_backend="json")

State (clidev/state.py)

Global, dict-like state, accessible anywhere in your app.

app.state["username"] = "Vrushabh"
print(app.state["username"])

app.state.on_change(lambda key, old, new: print(f"{key}: {old} -> {new}"))

Storage (clidev/storage.py)

Every form (or any code) can persist data through a pluggable backend: memory, json, sqlite, yaml, or toml.

app.storage.save("user", {"name": "Bob"})
user = app.storage.load("user")

app = App("My App", storage_backend="sqlite")

Forms (clidev/forms.py, inputs.py, validators.py)

Chainable form builder with automatic validation.

form = app.form("User")
form.text("Name")
form.email("Email")
form.password("Password")
form.number("Age")

data = form.run()
# {"Name": "Vrushabh", "Email": "[e-mail]", "Password": "******", "Age": 17}

Supported field types: text, email, password, number, url, file, folder, date, time, checkbox, toggle, radio, select/dropdown, multiselect, searchable.

Custom validators can be attached per-field via extra_validators=[...] using anything from clidev.validators (min_length, max_length, min_value, max_value, is_date, etc.).

Menus (clidev/menus.py)

menu = app.menu("Main Menu")
menu.option("Create Project", create_project)
menu.option("Deploy", deploy)
menu.option("Exit", app.exit)

Nested menus:

main = app.menu("Main")
settings = app.menu("Settings")
main.link("Settings", settings)

Page routing (clidev/router.py, pages.py)

@app.page("home")
def home():
    ...

app.goto("settings")
app.back()

Conditional navigation (clidev/actions.py)

@app.when(lambda data: data["Role"] == "Admin")
def admin():
    app.goto("admin_menu")

or:

app.if_value("Role", equals="Admin").goto("admin_menu")
app.if_value("Age", greater_than=18).goto("adult_menu")

Supported comparisons: equals, not_equals, greater_than, less_than, greater_equal, less_equal, contains, in_list.

Workflow engine (clidev/workflow.py)

workflow = app.workflow()
workflow.step(login)
workflow.step(select_project)
workflow.step(build)
workflow.step(deploy)
result = workflow.start()

Each step can accept a shared context dict; whatever a step returns (as a dict) is merged into that context for subsequent steps.

Events (clidev/events.py)

@app.on_start
def startup():
    ...

@app.on_exit
def shutdown():
    ...

@app.on_submit(some_form)
def save(data):
    ...

@app.on_error
def on_error(e):
    ...

Images & Video (clidev/image.py)

Render static images and play video clips directly inside the terminal, using colored half-block characters (real truecolor, not ASCII-art approximation) for near photo-quality output in supporting terminals.

app.image("photo.png").show()

app.video("clip.mp4").play()

Requires optional dependencies:

pip install clidev[media]

or individually:

pip install Pillow            # for images
pip install opencv-python     # for video

If these aren't installed, calling .image() or .video() raises a clear ClidevError telling you what to install — the rest of clidev works fine without them.

Images

app.image("photo.png").show()
app.image("photo.png", width=60).show()   # control render width in columns

Argument	Default	Description
path	—	Path to the image file
width	terminal width (max 120)	Render width in terminal columns

Video

app.video("clip.mp4").play()
app.video("clip.mp4", width=60, fps=10).play(max_frames=200)

Argument	Default	Description
path	—	Path to the video file
width	terminal width (max 100)	Render width in terminal columns
fps	source video's FPS	Override playback frame rate

.play() options:

• max_frames — stop after N rendered frames (default: play whole video)
• skip — render every Nth source frame, useful to keep pace on longer or higher-fps clips where terminal redraw can't keep up

Terminal compatibility: works best in terminals with truecolor support (Windows Terminal, iTerm2, most modern Linux terminals). Classic cmd.exe may render duller or incorrect colors.

Command execution (clidev/shell.py)

app.cmd("git init")

result = app.cmd("git status", capture=True)
print(result.stdout, result.ok)

app.cmd("pip install -r requirements.txt", background=True)

Progress & tasks (clidev/progress.py, spinner.py, tasks.py, scheduler.py)

with app.progress("Installing"):
    app.cmd("pip install numpy")
    app.cmd("pip install pandas")

@app.task
def build():
    ...

app.run_task("build")

Plugins (clidev/plugins.py)

from clidev.plugins import Plugin

class GitPlugin(Plugin):
    name = "git"

    def on_install(self, app):
        ...

    def on_start(self, app):
        ...

app.use(GitPlugin())

Themes (clidev/themes.py, colors.py)

app = App("My App", theme="dark")

theme = Theme()
theme.primary("blue")
theme.success("green")

Banner (clidev/banner.py)

Render text as large ASCII-art block letters — great for app splash screens, section headers, or command output.

app.banner("HI").show()

Customize the symbol used to draw the letters:

app.banner("DEPLOYED", symbol="@").show()

Or use it standalone (outside an App instance):

from clidev.banner import Banner

Banner("HELLO", symbol="*").show()

Supported characters: A-Z (case-insensitive), 0-9, and basic punctuation (. , ! ? - :). Unsupported characters render as blank space rather than raising an error.

Constructor options:

Argument	Default	Description
text	—	Text to render (auto-uppercased)
symbol	"#"	Character used to draw filled pixels
spacing	1	Blank columns between letters
theme	None	If set (e.g. via app.banner(...)), colors the banner using the theme's primary color

.render() returns the raw multi-line string (useful if you want to embed it inside a Card, log it, or write it to a file) — .show() prints it directly to the console with theme styling applied.

from clidev import App

app = App("My App") app.banner("MY APP").show() ...

Logging (clidev/logger.py)

app.logger.info("Started")
app.logger.warning("Warning")
app.logger.error("Failed")

UI widgets

• app.table(title, columns=[...]) — data tables (clidev/table.py)
• app.tree(label) — tree views (clidev/tree.py)
• app.card(title, content) — bordered content cards (clidev/cards.py)
• app.dashboard(title) — multi-panel grid overview (clidev/dashboard.py)
• app.dialog.confirm(...), app.dialog.prompt(...), app.dialog.alert(...) (clidev/dialogs.py)
• app.notify.success/error/warning/info(...) (clidev/notifications.py)
• app.statusbar.set(...).render() (clidev/statusbar.py)

Project generator (clidev/generators/, cli.py)

clidev new myproject

Creates:

myproject/
│
├── app.py
├── routes.py
├── menus.py
├── forms.py
├── workflows.py
├── commands.py
├── storage.py
├── settings.py
└── assets/

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Full example

See examples/basic_app.py for the complete "Developer Toolkit" example (menus, page routing, forms, storage, conditional navigation, and shell commands), and examples/workflow_app.py for a workflow + plugin + dashboard example.

from clidev import App

app = App("Developer Toolkit")

home = app.menu("Home")
home.option("Create Project", "project_form")
home.option("Settings", "settings")
home.option("Exit", app.exit)


@app.page("project_form")
def project_form_page():
    project = app.form("Project")
    project.text("Project Name")
    project.select("Language", ["Python", "Rust", "Go"])
    data = project.run()

    if not data:
        return

    app.storage.save("project", data)
    app._last_form_data = data

    if data["Language"] == "Python":
        app.goto("python_setup")
    else:
        app.success(f"Project '{data['Project Name']}' created ({data['Language']}).")


@app.page("python_setup")
def python_setup():
    with app.progress("Setting up Python project"):
        app.cmd("python -m venv .venv_demo")
        app.cmd("git init")
    app.success("Project Created")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

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Running the tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v

The test suite (in tests/) covers global state, all storage backends, form field validation, the shell command wrapper, routing/history, the workflow engine, conditional navigation, the event dispatcher, theming, the project generator, and full App integration — 85 tests in total.

Roadmap

• Additional storage backends: PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis
• clidev-auth, clidev-cloud, clidev-testing, clidev-plugins as separate installable packages
• Richer dashboard layout options and live-updating widgets

License

MIT