painted 0.4.1

A cell-buffer terminal UI framework

painted

One library. Print to TUI. One dependency.

from painted import show

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

TTY gets a styled bar chart. Pipe gets plain text. --json gets JSON. Same data, same function — the stack figures out the rest.

Enter anywhere

Every entry point uses the same building blocks. Pick the one that fits your problem — you never hand over control, and there's no cliff between them.

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 capabilities — a flag exists only because the app declared it, and a declared capability must change output:

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. 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 are semver-stable (removing or renaming a public name is a major version); painted.cli + painted.tui are the evolving framework surface and may change across minor versions — pre-1.0, pin accordingly.

Primitives

Export	Purpose
Cell / Style	Atomic display unit (char + style, frozen)
Span / Line	Styled text with display-width awareness
Block	Immutable rectangle of cells for composition

Composition

Export	Purpose
join_horizontal / join_vertical	Combine Blocks
pad / border / truncate	Transform Blocks
BorderChars	ROUNDED, HEAVY, DOUBLE, LIGHT, ASCII presets

Display

Export	Purpose
show(data)	Zero-config display with auto-detection
print_block(block)	Print a Block to stdout (TTY-aware)
run_cli(args, render=, fetch=, ...)	CLI harness: zoom/mode/format, plus declared tags=, depth_aliases=, budgets=, fetch_stream=, live_delivery=
run_app(argv, commands)	Multi-command routing; each AppCommand handler calls run_cli

Views (painted.views)

Export	Purpose
shape_lens	Auto-dispatch for exploration (numeric → chart, hierarchical → tree)
tree_lens / chart_lens	Explicit tree and chart strategies
list_view / table / text_input	Stateful interactive components
spinner / progress_bar / sparkline	Animation and data viz

TUI (painted.tui)

Export	Purpose
Surface	Alt screen, keyboard, resize, diff-flush render loop
Layer	Modal stack: Stay / Pop / Push / Quit
Buffer / BufferView	2D cell grid with region clipping

Aesthetic

Export	Purpose
Palette	5 semantic Style roles (success, warning, error, accent, muted) + a series categorical ramp
IconSet	Glyph vocabulary with ASCII fallback

License

MIT