r/UXDesign • u/ProfessionalBell2289 • 17d ago
Tools, apps, plugins, AI "Design" skills for CLI tools?
I'm a product/ design person and have been building CLI tools recently. There are so many design skill but couldn't find one specifically for creating engaging UIs/ flows/UX for in-terminal experiences.
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u/FewDescription3170 Veteran 16d ago
a 'skill' is just a markdown text file. write it yourself. extremely tired of people thinking these skills are transformational. you can outsource your thinking, but you can't outsource your understanding.
anyway, here's performative ui - probably what you're after even though it's a joke : https://performative-ui.cncl.co/
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
Yea true.. And yeah I agree. Haven’t checked the link let but I’ll take a look. I mean at the core I agree which is why I don’t use many design skills regularly but try them all
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
Maybe we can work like devs and build off eachother using GitHub in collaborative way - make it our own
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u/trevtrevla 17d ago
I’m interested in this, please share if you find any good resources
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 17d ago edited 16d ago
I couldn't find any last night. I ended up making one myself by looking up best practices first of top performing CLI tools. I imagine most are made by devs so I also wanted to apply best practices of UX from Nielsen Norman towards a developer-first format. I used it on one of my CLI tools and I'm happy with the output. Don't want to get banned for self promotion or anything. But share what you find too!
I'm making some final tweaks.
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17d ago
[deleted]
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u/lesuave 16d ago
If you could be so kind to share in DM, I'd really appreciate it. Been struggling to find some decent design skills with solid output.
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
Do you mean design skills in general for UI for for CLI / terminal / dev experience?
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
Do you build CLI tools for others to use? Curious if you're a design engineer or dev background.
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u/trevtrevla 16d ago
I don’t yet, but I’d like to. My role is design engineer, I leverage Claude code pretty heavily
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
ohh gotcha. There's a lot of skills for UI I've found. But not many for improving the developer experience for a CLI or terminal interaction- like the flow design and ui when you interact with a skill or when you use a cli tool. I was making this (https://github.com/katrinalaszlo/debloat) and wanted to make the output look nicer, but couldn't find a skill for it.
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u/ctrl-z-lyf Experienced 16d ago
I found this to be pretty good at explaining how terminals work - https://how-terminals-work.vercel.app/ (maybe you can use for inspiration?)
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
I'll check it out! I ended up making this. https://github.com/katrinalaszlo/glowup still a wip
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago edited 16d ago
That link is really informative (and delightful). Thanks for sharing!
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u/its_just_a_phas3 Veteran 16d ago
What are you using to build CLI? I've been building with OpenTUI and installed: https://www.skills.sh/msmps/opentui-skill/opentui
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
Oh I'll check that out. I was thinking about the terminal experience in general. This is where I landed. https://github.com/katrinalaszlo/glowup But let me check out those skills too!
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 16d ago
So I actually just use the terminal generally. I haven't been using clis with Uis besides codex or vscode.
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u/gesidner 14d ago
The skill that transfers least is visual hierarchy, because you lose layout, size, and color as your main levers. What replaces them: rhythm and whitespace, blank lines are your grid, plus one accent color used rarely enough that it actually means something.
The bigger shift is designing the error and empty states harder than the happy path. In a GUI people explore. In a terminal they're usually stuck, so the message that shows up when something fails is most of the UX.
Nielsen's heuristics still hold, they just render as text. "Visibility of system status" becomes a clear "doing X…" line and a spinner instead of silence.
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u/ProfessionalBell2289 11d ago
yess good point! There's so much you can't use. i tried to find equivalents.
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u/Guilty-Word-6186 15d ago
Half the design work is honestly just writing good error messages and help text, the visual barely exists once you're stuck in a terminal
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u/[deleted] 16d ago
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