Hatui

Hatui is a configurable hacker-style terminal UI toolkit for Python. It lets you compose full-screen TUIs from YAML screens, reusable widgets, themes, routing, and data providers.

Install

Recommended for end users:

pipx install hatui-kit

Python package install:

pip install hatui-kit

Installed CLI command:

hatui

Windows convenience build:

• Download hatui-windows-amd64.zip from GitHub Releases
• Unzip it
• Run hatui.exe

Quick start

Run the bundled demo:

hatui

Validate the bundled demo spec:

hatui validate

Render a non-interactive preview:

hatui preview --width 100 --height 28 --frames 1

Run a custom spec:

hatui run path/to/screen.yaml

What Hatui provides

• declarative YAML screen loading with includes
• widget and provider registries
• routing, modals, focus traversal, and debug overlays
• theme slots, color tokens, and font tokens
• reusable hacker-style widgets for dashboards and console simulations

Example custom spec

theme:
  preset: clean_ops

providers:
  - type: constant
    name: hello_text
    target: ui.hello
    value: Hello from Hatui

screen:
  type: box
  name: root_box
  title: demo
  padding: 1
  child:
    type: text
    name: hello_text
    text_key: ui.hello

Run it with:

hatui run ./demo.yaml

Development

Editable install:

python -m pip install -e .

Smoke checks:

python -m compileall src
PYTHONPATH=src python -m hatui validate
PYTHONPATH=src python -m hatui preview --width 100 --height 28 --frames 1