@clack/prompts#

Effortlessly build beautiful command-line apps 🪄 Try the demo

@clack/prompts is an opinionated, pre-styled wrapper around @clack/core.

• 🤏 80% smaller than other options
• 💎 Beautiful, minimal UI
• ✅ Simple API
• 🧱 Comes with text, confirm, select, multiselect, and spinner components

Basics#

Setup#

The intro and outro functions will print a message to begin or end a prompt session, respectively.

import { intro, outro } from '@clack/prompts';

intro(`create-my-app`);
// Do stuff
outro(`You're all set!`);

Cancellation#

The isCancel function is a guard that detects when a user cancels a question with CTRL + C. You should handle this situation for each prompt, optionally providing a nice cancellation message with the cancel utility.

import { isCancel, cancel, text } from '@clack/prompts';

const value = await text(/* TODO */);

if (isCancel(value)) {
  cancel('Operation cancelled.');
  process.exit(0);
}

Components#

Text#

The text component accepts a single line of text.

import { text } from '@clack/prompts';

const meaning = await text({
  message: 'What is the meaning of life?',
  placeholder: 'Not sure',
  initialValue: '42',
  validate(value) {
    if (value.length === 0) return `Value is required!`;
  },
});

Confirm#

The confirm component accepts a yes or no answer. The result is a boolean value of true or false.

import { confirm } from '@clack/prompts';

const shouldContinue = await confirm({
  message: 'Do you want to continue?',
});

Select#

The select component allows a user to choose one value from a list of options. The result is the value prop of a given option.

import { select } from '@clack/prompts';

const projectType = await select({
  message: 'Pick a project type.',
  options: [
    { value: 'ts', label: 'TypeScript' },
    { value: 'js', label: 'JavaScript' },
    { value: 'coffee', label: 'CoffeeScript', hint: 'oh no' },
  ],
});

Multi-Select#

The multiselect component allows a user to choose many values from a list of options. The result is an array with all selected value props.

import { multiselect } from '@clack/prompts';

const additionalTools = await multiselect({
  message: 'Select additional tools.',
  options: [
    { value: 'eslint', label: 'ESLint', hint: 'recommended' },
    { value: 'prettier', label: 'Prettier' },
    { value: 'gh-action', label: 'GitHub Action' },
  ],
  required: false,
});

Spinner#

The spinner component surfaces a pending action, such as a long-running download or dependency installation.

import { spinner } from '@clack/prompts';

const s = spinner();
s.start('Installing via npm');
// Do installation here
s.stop('Installed via npm');

Utilities#

Group#

Grouping prompts together is a great way to keep your code organized. This accepts a JSON object with a name that can be used to reference the group later. The second argument is an optional but has a onCancel callback that will be called if the user cancels one of the prompts in the group.

import * as p from '@clack/prompts';

const group = await p.group(
  {
    name: () => p.text({ message: 'What is your name?' }),
    age: () => p.text({ message: 'What is your age?' }),
    color: ({ results }) =>
      p.multiselect({
        message: `What is your favorite color ${results.name}?`,
        options: [
          { value: 'red', label: 'Red' },
          { value: 'green', label: 'Green' },
          { value: 'blue', label: 'Blue' },
        ],
      }),
  },
  {
    // On Cancel callback that wraps the group
    // So if the user cancels one of the prompts in the group this function will be called
    onCancel: ({ results }) => {
      p.cancel('Operation cancelled.');
      process.exit(0);
    },
  }
);

console.log(group.name, group.age, group.color);

Workflow#

Works just like group but infer types way better and treats your group like a workflow, allowing you to create conditional steps (forks) along the process.

import * as p from '@clack/prompts';

const results = await p
  .workflow()
  .step('name', () => p.text({ message: 'What is your package name?' }))
  .step('type', () =>
    p.select({
      message: `Pick a project type:`,
      initialValue: 'ts',
      maxItems: 5,
      options: [
        { value: 'ts', label: 'TypeScript' },
        { value: 'js', label: 'JavaScript' },
        { value: 'rust', label: 'Rust' },
        { value: 'go', label: 'Go' },
        { value: 'python', label: 'Python' },
        { value: 'coffee', label: 'CoffeeScript', hint: 'oh no' },
      ],
    })
  )
  .step('install', () =>
    p.confirm({
      message: 'Install dependencies?',
      initialValue: false,
    })
  )
  .step('fork', ({ results }) => {
    if (results.install === true) {
      return p
        .workflow()
        .step('package', () =>
          p.select({
            message: 'Pick a package manager:',
            initialValue: 'pnpm',
            options: [
              {
                label: 'npm',
                value: 'npm',
              },
              {
                label: 'yarn',
                value: 'yarn',
              },
              {
                label: 'pnpm',
                value: 'pnpm',
              },
            ],
          })
        )
        .run();
    }
  })
  .onCancel(() => {
    p.cancel('Workflow canceled');
    process.exit(0);
  })
  .run();
console.log(results);