Show HN: Moulti: a CLI-driven TUI for a better, clearer display of script output

3 points

2 years ago

Moulti is a Terminal User Interface (TUI) that displays steps, i.e. collapsible colored boxes with titles, to which one can pipe arbitrary outputs through a Command-Line Interface (CLI):

  whatever | moulti pass step_id

This results in a clear, step-by-step display of the output, as opposed to the traditional 'just a bunch of lines' approach. Individual steps may be copied to the clipboard and the whole thing can be dumped to/loaded from a directory containing a couple of files per step.

Moulti also offers an optional progress bar and dialog/whitpail-like interactive steps (input fields or push buttons). It runs on Linux, MacOS and *BSD. Porting to Windows is currently postponed. It is implemented in Python using the Textual framework, which makes it possible to customize the visual appearance of virtually anything through Textual CSS and ANSI color themes.

This idea wandered in my mind for quite some time. Recently, I wrote a script with numerous steps, which pushed me to look for such tools. I found one that was close to the concept but not satisfying in terms of stability and design, so I started working on Moulti. Specifically, I wanted to: 1. avoid solutions that launch processes themselves; 2. delegate as many aspects (title, content, color, min/max-height, collapsing, ...) as possible to the client side instead of looking for a behavior that pleases everyone.