TUI Application Playbook

TUI Application Playbook

This playbook guides you through executing a terminal user interface (TUI) application mission. Use this for CLI tools with interactive interfaces, terminal dashboards, text-based editors, and similar projects rendered in the terminal.

Dependency: tuistory skill

This playbook requires the tuistory skill for TUI verification and testing. If the tuistory skill is not already available in your <available_skills>, install it from the droid-evolved plugin:

droid plugin marketplace add https://github.com/​Factory-AI/​factory-plugins
droid plugin install droid-evolved@factory-plugins

After installation, the tuistory skill will appear in your available skills.

Milestone Strategy: Vertical Slices

Structure your milestones as vertical slices of functionality, not horizontal layers.

Good milestones:

• "navigation" (menu system, views, keybindings - full stack)
• "data-display" (list views, detail views, formatting - full stack)
• "editing" (input handling, validation, persistence - full stack)

Bad milestones:

• "all-keybindings" (horizontal - can't test in isolation)
• "rendering-layer" (horizontal - can't test without data/​state)

Each milestone should leave the app in a coherent, testable state where a user can complete a meaningful flow.

Walking Skeleton First

Before any real feature implementation, establish a walking skeleton that spans the full user-facing surface with the thinnest possible implementation.

Why: This lets work-scrutiny-validator determine testing needs and user-testing-validator exercise the complete surface from the start. Prevents building features in isolation only to discover integration issues later.

What to include:

• All planned views/​screens (can be stubs/​placeholders)
• All planned commands and keybindings (can be no-ops)
• Basic navigation between views
• Minimal rendering pipeline

Skeleton milestone should be first. Once the skeleton exists, subsequent milestones fill in real functionality.

Worker Types for TUI

tui-worker

• Implements TUI features (views, components, input handling, state)
• TDD: Write tests FIRST (before any implementation)
• MUST do manual TUI verification with tuistory:
  • Launch the app, navigate to the relevant view, and verify rendering and interactions
  • Use tuistory snapshot --trim to capture terminal output and verify visual correctness
  • Test keyboard interactions (tuistory press <key>), input handling (tuistory type "<text>")
  • Check for rendering artifacts, alignment issues, overflow, and missing states
• Fix issues found:
  • Issues with own work (including from manual testing) → must fix
  • Manageable existing issues under their skill → fix them
  • Large scope or outside their skill → report to orchestrator
  • Include any fixes in whatWasImplemented

backend-worker

• Implements data layer, services, and business logic that the TUI consumes
• TDD: Write tests FIRST (before any implementation)
• Verifies actual behavior (not just tests passing)
• Fix issues found:
  • Issues with own work (including from manual testing) → must fix
  • Manageable existing issues under their skill → fix them
  • Large scope or outside their skill → report to orchestrator
  • Include any fixes in whatWasImplemented

Quality Enforcement Flow

1. Orchestrator creates implementation features grouped by milestone
2. Implementation workers build features (TDD + manual verification via tuistory)
3. When milestone X completes → system injects work-scrutiny-validator
4. Work-scrutiny validates handoffs match diffs, re-runs tests
5. Work-scrutiny determines what user testing is needed and creates testing features
6. User-testing validates TUI flows via tuistory
7. Failed validation surfaces bugs → orchestrator creates fix features
8. Repeat until milestone passes, then move to next milestone

Common Pitfalls

1. Building state management without UI - Leads to data structures that don't match rendering needs. Build vertical slices instead.

2. Skipping the skeleton - Causes integration issues late in the mission. Always start with skeleton.

3. Features too large - "Build the settings view" is too big. Break into: "settings navigation", "settings editing", "settings persistence", etc.

4. Forgetting edge states - Workers often implement happy path only. expectedBehavior should include empty states, error states, overflow/​truncation, and resize handling.

5. Not testing keyboard interactions - TUI apps are keyboard-driven. Every view needs its keybindings tested, including edge cases (rapid input, conflicting shortcuts).

6. Not verifying visually with tuistory - Unit tests can't catch rendering issues. Workers must use tuistory to verify layout, alignment, and visual state.

7. No lasting test infrastructure - Per-worker TDD produces unit/​integration tests, but consider whether the mission also needs dedicated features for shared test fixtures or e2e test suites using tuistory.