Repl.Spectre 0.11.0-dev.6

Repl.Spectre

Spectre.Console integration for Repl Toolkit. Provides rich interactive prompts, injectable IAnsiConsole, a lightweight Spectre output format, and an interaction presenter that can capture feedback during screen-owned flows.

Features

• Rich prompts — SelectionPrompt, MultiSelectionPrompt, ConfirmationPrompt, TextPrompt, and secret input via Spectre.Console
• IAnsiConsole injection — use IAnsiConsole as a command parameter to render tables, trees, panels, and other Spectre renderables
• Lightweight output — the "spectre" output format renders objects, results, help, and collections with less chrome than the default Spectre widgets
• Banner support — inject IAnsiConsole into WithBanner() callbacks for rich startup banners (FigletText, Markup, etc.)
• Capture support — SpectreInteractionPresenter.BeginCapture(...) redirects REPL feedback away from a screen-owned Spectre surface
• Configurable capabilities — SpectreConsoleOptions to control Unicode rendering for different terminal environments

Setup

var app = ReplApp.Create(services =>
{
    services.AddSpectreConsole(); // DI: IAnsiConsole + SpectreInteractionHandler + SpectreInteractionPresenter
})
.UseSpectreConsole(); // Output transformer + banner format + UTF-8 encoding

Two calls, two concerns:

Usage

Auto-rendered tables

Return a collection from a command — the output transformer renders it as a lightweight Spectre table:

app.Map("list", (IContactStore store) => store.All());

Column headers are derived from [Display] attributes. No rendering code needed.

Direct IAnsiConsole injection

Inject IAnsiConsole to use any Spectre renderable:

app.Map("report", (IAnsiConsole console) =>
{
    var table = new Table().AddColumn("Name").AddColumn("Value");
    table.AddRow("Item", "42");
    console.Write(table);
});

Works with all Spectre renderables: Table, Tree, Panel, BarChart, Calendar, FigletText, Progress, Status, and more.

Format switching

UseSpectreConsole() makes spectre the default output format. You can still switch per-command:

• --spectre selects the Spectre renderer
• --human switches back to the standard text renderer
• --output:<format> remains the canonical selector

--help respects the selected format as well, so --spectre --help uses Spectre help while --human --help returns the classic text help.

Transparent prompt upgrade

IReplInteractionChannel calls are automatically rendered as Spectre prompts:

No Spectre-specific code in handlers — the same handler works with or without the Spectre package.

Capture feedback during screen-owned flows

If your command temporarily owns the terminal surface, do not mix that full-screen/live Spectre rendering with regular REPL status/progress output on the same writer. Instead, capture interaction feedback explicitly:

app.Map("dashboard", static async (
    SpectreInteractionPresenter presenter,
    IReplIoContext io,
    CancellationToken ct) =>
{
    using var capture = presenter.BeginCapture(io.Error);
    await RunDashboardAsync(ct);
});

The TextWriter overload emits plain text only. In application handlers, prefer a session-aware sink such as IReplIoContext.Error. Reserve raw writers for host/tooling code that already owns the transport surface.

You can also capture to a custom presenter:

using var capture = presenter.BeginCapture(myPresenter);

This is the intended integration point for future TUI tooling.

Banner with IAnsiConsole

Use IAnsiConsole in banner callbacks for rich startup output:

app.WithBanner((IAnsiConsole console) =>
{
    console.Write(new FigletText("My App").Color(Color.Blue));
    console.MarkupLine("[grey]Type 'help' to get started[/]");
});

Configuration

UseSpectreConsole() accepts an optional callback to configure capabilities:

// Default: Unicode enabled
.UseSpectreConsole()

// Disable Unicode for limited terminals
.UseSpectreConsole(o => o.Unicode = false)

SpectreConsoleOptions

When Unicode is enabled, UseSpectreConsole() sets Console.OutputEncoding to UTF-8 to ensure Unicode characters (progress bars, spinners, box-drawing) render correctly on Windows.

Docs

• Cookbook: Spectre.Console — setup, prompts, renderables, capture, banners
• Interactivity — IReplInteractionChannel, prompt contracts, progress
• Best Practices — static lambdas, test patterns, DI composition

Sample

See sample 07-spectre for a comprehensive demo covering 21 Spectre features across 14 commands.