TUI Overview

Interactive Terminal User Interface for PraisonAI

PraisonAI TUI

The PraisonAI TUI (Terminal User Interface) provides an app-like interactive experience for running AI agents directly in your terminal. Built with Textual, it offers a modern, responsive interface with streaming output, queue management, and session persistence.

Features

• Event-loop driven UI - Always-active input, non-blocking operations
• Multi-pane layout - Chat history, status bar, queue panel, tool execution
• Streaming output - Token-by-token display with backpressure handling
• Queue management - Submit multiple tasks, cancel, retry, priority ordering
• Session persistence - Resume sessions after crashes
• Slash commands - Quick actions like /help, /model, /cost
• Keyboard shortcuts - Efficient navigation and control

Quick Start

# Launch the TUI
praisonai tui launch

# Or with options
praisonai tui launch --model gpt-4 --workspace ./my-project

Installation

TUI is included by default with PraisonAI:

pip install praisonai

For a minimal installation without TUI:

pip install praisonai[lite]

Architecture

The TUI is built on a clean separation of concerns:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    TUI Application                       │
│  ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐       │
│  │  App    │ │ Widgets │ │ Screens │ │ Events  │       │
│  └────┬────┘ └────┬────┘ └────┬────┘ └────┬────┘       │
│       └───────────┴───────────┴───────────┘             │
│                         │                               │
│  ┌─────────────────────┴─────────────────────┐         │
│  │         Event Bus / Message Queue          │         │
│  └─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┘         │
│                         │                               │
│  ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┴─────────┐ ┌─────────┐         │
│  │ Queue   │ │ Worker Pool       │ │ Persist │         │
│  │ Manager │ │ (Agent Runners)   │ │ Layer   │         │
│  └─────────┘ └───────────────────┘ └─────────┘         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Key Components

Widgets

Widget	Description
ChatWidget	Displays chat history with streaming support
ComposerWidget	Input area with slash command detection
StatusWidget	Status bar showing session, model, tokens, cost
QueuePanelWidget	Queue display with cancel/retry actions
ToolPanelWidget	Tool execution status and approvals

Screens

Screen	Description
MainScreen	Primary chat interface
QueueScreen	Queue management
SettingsScreen	Configuration
SessionScreen	Session browser

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Ctrl+Enter	Send message
Ctrl+C	Cancel current run
Ctrl+Q	Quit TUI
Ctrl+L	Clear screen
F1	Show help
F2	Toggle queue panel
F3	Open settings
/	Start slash command

Next Steps

• TUI Commands - CLI commands reference
• Queue System - Queue management details
• TUI Simulation - Headless testing