[ Feature Request ] Richer UI options in mods (ANSI support, spinners, layout helpers)

[Fletu94]

Summary

When building interactive mods, we are limited to displaying raw text strings inside "cmd.ui.select()" and "cmd.ui.notify()". Creating structured layouts or showing background progress currently requires custom ASCII drawing or raw terminal printing, which is complex to keep aligned and does not support native-looking animations like spinners.

Expected Behavior

We would love to see the Mod Harness UI (cmd.ui) enriched with standard CLI primitives:

1. ANSI Color Support: Allow titles inside selectors to parse standard color codes (e.g. using chalk or ANSI codes) to highlight choices or display clean warnings.
2. Native Spinners: A simple loading indicator API for long-running processes (e.g., repository checks, configuration setups):

   const spinner = cmd.ui.spinner("Loading configuration...");
   await task();
   spinner.success("Done!");

3.Layout Primitives: Simple helper functions to display dividers or panels without having to manually calculate character lengths and borders in strings.

Providing these primitives natively would allow developers to build premium, consistent community mods that look and feel like built-in features of Command Code.

Actual Behavior

Installing standard Node/Bun packages like ora or @clack/prompts, but they require direct TTY controls which the harness sandbox does not permit.

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. create a mod

Command Code Version

1.4.2

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/IDE

ghostty

Shell

command

Additional context

No response

[dthyresson]

• ANSI Color Support: Allow titles inside selectors to parse standard color codes (e.g. using chalk or ANSI codes) to highlight choices or display clean warnings.

I second having more mod ui helpers for layouts, colors, spinners which would be in line with some TUI taste as well (https://github.com/ahmadawais/terminui/blob/main/.commandcode/taste/cli/taste.md):

Always use ora for loading spinners in CLI projects. Confidence: 0.95
Use picocolors for terminal string coloring in CLI projects. Confidence: 0.90

For layout:

• padding
• tables

See some common widgets in https://github.com/ahmadawais/terminui/blob/main/README.md for ideas