Spectre.Console

Repl.Spectre integrates Spectre.Console into Repl. Your handlers return plain .NET objects; Spectre.Console renders them as rich terminal output.

Setup

dotnet add package Repl.Spectre

var app = ReplApp.Create().UseDefaultInteractive();
app.UseSpectreConsole();   // rich prompts + renderables in one call

Rich output renderables

Return a Spectre.Console IRenderable directly from your handler:

app.Map("contacts table", static (IContactStore store) =>
{
    var table = new Table()
        .AddColumn("Id")
        .AddColumn("Name")
        .AddColumn("Email");

    foreach (var c in store.All())
        table.AddRow(c.Id.ToString(), c.Name, c.Email);

    return table;
});

┌────┬───────┬──────────────────────┐
│ Id │ Name  │ Email                │
├────┼───────┼──────────────────────┤
│ 1  │ Alice │ alice@example.com    │
│ 2  │ Bob   │ bob@example.com      │
└────┴───────┴──────────────────────┘

Charts

app.Map("stats chart", static (IContactStore store) =>
{
    var chart = new BarChart()
        .Width(60)
        .Label("Contacts by domain");

    foreach (var g in store.All().GroupBy(c => c.Email.Split('@')[1]))
        chart.AddItem(g.Key, g.Count(), Color.Blue);

    return chart;
});

Progress bars

using Repl.Interaction;

app.Map("import {file}", static async (string file, IReplInteractionChannel ui, CancellationToken ct) =>
{
    var lines = await File.ReadAllLinesAsync(file, ct);

    for (int i = 0; i < lines.Length; i++)
    {
        await ImportLine(lines[i], ct);
        await ui.WriteProgressAsync($"Importing… {i + 1}/{lines.Length}", (double)(i + 1) / lines.Length, ct);
    }

    return Results.Success($"Imported {lines.Length} records.");
});

With UseSpectreConsole(), progress renders as a live Spectre.Console Progress bar.

Rich prompts

UseSpectreConsole() upgrades all IReplInteractionChannel prompts to Spectre.Console widgets automatically:

using Repl.Interaction;

app.Map("add", static async (IReplInteractionChannel ui, IContactStore store, CancellationToken ct) =>
{
    var name  = await ui.AskTextAsync("name",  "Full name:",     ct: ct);
    var email = await ui.AskTextAsync("email", "Email address:", ct: ct);
    store.Add(name, email);
    return Results.Success($"Added {name}.");
});

No handler changes are needed when switching between terminals — UseSpectreConsole() upgrades the rendering layer and all prompts degrade gracefully on plain terminals.

Available renderables

Any Spectre.Console renderable works as a return value: Table, Panel, Tree, BarChart, BreakdownChart, Calendar, JsonText, Markup, FigletText, TextPath, Grid, Columns, Rule.

Capability detection

Spectre.Console detects terminal capabilities automatically. On terminals without color support, output degrades gracefully to plain text.