Interactive prompts

The prompts package is a complete question toolkit: eight prompt types that render as live, repainting lines at a terminal — and fall back to plain line input automatically when stdin isn’t a TTY, so the same command works in a pipe, a script, or CI without a non-interactive flag.

In a command, context.prompts() returns an instance pre-wired to the command’s streams, arena allocator, and theme:

// Pre-wired to the command's streams, allocator, and theme.
const p = context.prompts();

const name = try p.text(.{
    .message = "Project name:", .default = "my-project",
});
const features = try p.multiSelect(.{
    .message = "Features:",
    .choices = &.{ "typescript", "eslint", "prettier" },
    .defaults = &.{ true, true, false },
});
const pw = try p.password(.{
    .message = "Token:",
});

The eight types

Prompt	Asks	Returns
`text`	free-form input, optional default and live preview hint	the entered string
`confirm`	yes/no with a default (`Y/n` hint, single keypress)	`bool`
`select`	one choice from a list — ↑/↓ to move, Enter to pick	the chosen index
`multiSelect`	several choices — Space toggles, per-item defaults	the chosen indices
`password`	masked input, never echoed	the entered string
`search`	type-to-filter over a long list, then pick	the chosen index
`number`	numeric input with optional `min`/`max`, validation inline	the parsed number
`editor`	opens `$EDITOR` on a seeded temp file	the edited text

Terminal behavior, handled

Wrapping & resize — long messages word-wrap at the terminal width (grapheme- and ANSI-aware), and every prompt re-lays-out live on window resize.
Unicode-correct editing — backspace deletes one visual character; wide characters and combining sequences count correctly.
Answers persist — a completed prompt emits its styled question-and-answer as a static line into scrollback, so the transcript reads cleanly afterward.
Interrupts are yours — pass interrupt_keys and the prompt returns error.Interrupted when one is pressed; the caller decides whether that means cancel, back, or help.

Off a TTY

Every prompt degrades to a line-based equivalent with the same return type and value — there is no second code path to write:

	at a terminal	piped / CI
`text` / `password`	live editing, masked for password	reads a line
`confirm`	single keypress	reads `y`/`n` from a line
`select` / `search`	arrow-key highlighted list	numbered list, reads a number
`multiSelect`	Space-toggle list	prints the list, reads selections
`editor`	opens `$EDITOR`	reads remaining stdin

Prompts or widgets?

Prompts are one-shot questions: they block, return a value, and move on — right for a wizard, a scaffold, a few sequential questions. For a persistent, laid-out, keyboard-driven surface — a live form, a dashboard — build a full-screen App from the interactive widgets instead: see prompts vs widgets.

Standalone use

Like every zcli package, prompts works without the framework — construct a Prompts value with your own writer, reader, allocator, and theme context, and every prompt type behaves identically. The package’s examples/ directory has a runnable example per prompt type.