painted

A semantic renderer for the terminal. You declare what your output means — which fields matter at a glance, which are detail, which facets a reader would ask for by name — and painted derives how to show it: how much detail, what format, styled or plain, and which CLI flags exist at all. One dependency.

What "semantic" means, concretely

Here's a deploy-status tool. The render function declares meaning in three places: each service's state maps to a severity style, per-service latency is a named facet called timings, and error detail belongs to zoom level 2. It never mentions flags, pipes, JSON, or help text.

import sys
from painted import Block, Style, Tag, join_vertical, run_cli
from painted.cli import CliContext

STATE_STYLE = {
    "ok": Style(fg="green"),
    "degraded": Style(fg="yellow"),
    "down": Style(fg="red", bold=True),
}

def fetch() -> dict:
    return {"services": [
        {"name": "api-gateway", "state": "ok", "replicas": "3/3", "ms": 12},
        {"name": "billing", "state": "degraded", "replicas": "2/3", "ms": 340},
        {"name": "search", "state": "ok", "replicas": "2/2", "ms": 28},
    ]}

def render(ctx: CliContext, data: dict) -> Block:
    rows = []
    for svc in data["services"]:
        line = f"{svc['state']:<9} {svc['name']:<14} {svc['replicas']}"
        if ctx.fidelity.shows("timings"):                # a named facet
            line += f"  {svc['ms']:>4}ms"
        rows.append(Block.text(line, STATE_STYLE[svc["state"]]))
        if ctx.zoom >= 2 and svc["state"] != "ok":       # detail level
            rows.append(Block.text("          last error: upstream timeout (2m ago)", Style(dim=True)))
    return join_vertical(*rows)

run_cli(
    sys.argv[1:], render=render, fetch=fetch,
    prog="deploys", description="Deployment status",
    tags=[Tag("timings", "Show per-service latency", implied_at=2)],
)

That's the whole program. Now watch the rendering decisions derive — every output below is real captured output of the code above.

The default view shows what you declared to matter at a glance (on a TTY, ok is green and degraded is yellow — the severity styles):

$ deploys
ok        api-gateway    3/3
degraded  billing        2/3
ok        search         2/2

-v means zoom 2 — so the error detail you gated appears, and timings switches on because you declared it implied at that depth:

$ deploys -v
ok        api-gateway    3/3    12ms
degraded  billing        2/3   340ms
          last error: upstream timeout (2m ago)
ok        search         2/2    28ms

--timings exists as a flag because the Tag was declared — a reader can ask for that one facet by name without the rest of the verbosity:

$ deploys --timings
ok        api-gateway    3/3    12ms
degraded  billing        2/3   340ms
ok        search         2/2    28ms

The same declaration serializes — render isn't even called for this:

$ deploys --json
{"services": [{"name": "api-gateway", "state": "ok", "replicas": "3/3", "ms": 12}, ...]}

A pipe gets plain text automatically — no ANSI garbage in grep:

$ deploys | grep degraded
degraded  billing        2/3

And the help documents the surface you declared — nothing more:

$ deploys -h
deploys

Deployment status

Layers (named facets)
  --timings  Show per-service latency

Zoom (what to show)
  -q, --quiet    Minimal output
  -v, --verbose  Detailed (-v) or full (-vv)

Format (serialization)
  --json   JSON output
  --plain  Plain text, no ANSI codes
...

Nothing was written twice, and none of it can drift: parsing, help, and TAB completion are three reflections of the one declared parser — the flag under -h is the flag that parses is the flag that completes (multi-command apps get the zsh/bash glue from run_app's auto-injected completion command). That's the library's governing rule — the honesty rule: a flag exists only because a capability was declared, and a declared capability must change output. Nothing invented, nothing dead.

Styling toolkits make output beautiful; app frameworks compose widgets. painted's job is the layer between: zoom, format, delivery mode, and the flag surface itself all derive from what you declared the output to mean.

Explore first

Zero declarations also works. paint() is transcription — it renders what a value already declares (dict → key/value, list → items, a dataclass/Enum → its fields) and never invents a shape a value didn't declare (a bare list is items, not a chart; that claim needs lens=chart_lens):

from painted import paint

paint({"cpu": 67, "mem": 82, "disk": 45})

A TTY gets styled key/value lines; a pipe gets plain text. Same data, same function — and it's the same verb every layer up the stack renders through. The transcript is a starting point for poking at data, not the API — when output matters, declare more: compose the Block yourself, or declare the CLI's capabilities and let the surfaces derive.

Enter anywhere

Every entry point uses the same building blocks. Pick the rung that fits your problem — each rung is additive, and climbing never rewrites the rung below. (The invariant is monotonic enhancement: day-one code stays load-bearing forever.)

Print styled output

Replace print() one call at a time. Auto-detects TTY — no ANSI garbage in pipes.

from painted import Block, Style, print_block

block = Block.text("deploy OK", Style(fg="green", bold=True))
print_block(block)

Compose

Blocks are immutable rectangles. Compose them with functions — no widget tree, no DOM.

from painted import border, join_vertical, pad, ROUNDED

header = Block.text(" api-gateway ", Style(bold=True, reverse=True))
status = join_vertical(
    Block.text("  replicas: 2/3 ready", Style(fg="yellow")),
    Block.text("  /health:  200  12ms", Style(fg="green")),
)
card = border(join_vertical(header, status), chars=ROUNDED)
print_block(card)

CLI harness

One render function, three output modes. Pipe gets static, TTY gets live updates, -i gets full interactive.

from painted import run_cli, CliContext, Block

def render(ctx: CliContext, data: dict) -> Block:
    # your render logic — returns a Block
    ...

def fetch() -> dict:
    return {"status": "ok", "replicas": 3}

run_cli(sys.argv[1:], render=render, fetch=fetch)

myapp              # auto-detect
myapp -q           # quiet (zoom 0)
myapp -v           # verbose (zoom 2)
myapp --json       # JSON output
myapp | grep ok    # plain text, no ANSI

The flag surface grows only as you declare — the honesty rule again:

run_cli(
    sys.argv[1:], render=render, fetch=fetch,
    tags=[Tag("thinking", "Show reasoning", implied_at=3)],  # generates --thinking
    depth_aliases={"brief": 0, "full": 3},                   # --brief / --full
    budgets=True,                                            # --max-chars / --max-lines
)

Gate content with ctx.fidelity.shows("thinking"); read ctx.fidelity.chars for budgets. Add fetch_stream= for live updates (--live appears), and live_delivery="surface" to upgrade sustained streams to an alt-screen render loop (-i appears, converging with --live). Each rung is additive — climbing never rewrites the rung below. For multi-command apps, run_app routes subcommands through the same harness and injects a completion command that emits the zsh/bash glue. The full consumer guide lives in src/painted/README.md.

Full TUI

Alt screen, keyboard input, async render loop, diff-flush. Subclass Surface, override render() and on_key().

import asyncio
from painted import Block, Style, border
from painted.tui import Surface

class MyApp(Surface):
    def render(self):
        block = Block.text("Hello!", Style(fg="green"))
        border(block, title="Demo").paint(self._buf)

    def on_key(self, key: str):
        if key == "q":
            self.quit()

asyncio.run(MyApp().run())

Install

pip install painted

One dependency: wcwidth (wide character display width).

API

Two stability tiers: painted.core + painted.views + painted.display are semver-stable (removing or renaming a public name is a major version — show()'s removal at 1.0 is that pre-declared event); painted.cli + painted.tui are the evolving framework surface and may change across minor versions — pre-1.0, pin accordingly.

Primitives

Composition

Display

Views (painted.views)

TUI (painted.tui)

Aesthetic

License

MIT