Monospace Designer (alpha)

The Monospace Designer is a suite of tools, schemas, and AI agent skills designed to help you move from vague product intent to structured terminal user interfaces before you write a single line of rendering code.

It bridges the gap between the static rules of the Monospace Design TUI Standard and the active implementation of a Textual or Bubbletea application.

The Designer Philosophy

When building a TUI, it is tempting to start immediately with layout code or, worse, to draw web-based UI mockups that don’t translate to the terminal grid.

The Designer forces a TUI-First, Artifact-Driven approach:

1. Workflow over Screens: You do not start by drawing boxes. You start by defining the task flow, entry conditions, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
2. Structural YAML over Pixels: The source of truth for a design is a canonical YAML specification (dsl.yaml), not a Figma file or a Python script.
3. ASCII Projection: The Designer tools automatically project your structural YAML into reviewable ASCII wireframes. You iterate on the YAML, and the wireframes update deterministically.
4. Agent Collaboration: The mono-tui-design skill allows AI agents to act as your Senior Product Architect, generating these YAML artifacts and discussing the ASCII projections with you.

Sections

• Workflow Generation: How to define applications as a series of task stages and transitions.
• Wireframes: How to read and write the canonical YAML screen specifications and their ASCII projections.
• Prototyping: How to move from ASCII wireframes to interactive, navigable terminal prototypes.