Terminal Output Modes and Progressive Enhancement

Peekaboo's agent command automatically adjusts its output for modern terminals while staying CI-friendly.

Note

: The TermKit-based TUI was retired in November 2025. The agent now focuses on enhanced, compact, and minimal text output modes.

Overview

Peekaboo automatically detects your terminal's capabilities and selects the optimal output mode:

Enhanced formatting for color terminals with rich typography
Compact mode for standard ANSI terminals
Minimal mode for CI environments and pipes

You can still override the selection with --quiet, --verbose, --simple, or by setting PEEKABOO_OUTPUT_MODE.

Output Modes

✨ Enhanced Mode (Automatic)

Enabled for color terminals

Provides rich formatting with improved typography:

Structured completion summaries with visual separators
Clear emoji usage (🧠 for thinking, ✅ for completion)
Contextual progress information

👻 Peekaboo Agent v3.1.1 using Claude Opus 4.7 (main/abc123, 2026-05-11)

👁 see screen ✅ Captured screen (dialog detected, 5 elements) (1.2s)
🖱 click 'OK' ✅ Clicked 'OK' in dialog (0.8s)

────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
✅ Task Completed Successfully
📊 Stats: 2m 15s • ⚒ 5 tools, 1,247 tokens
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

🎨 Compact Mode (Automatic)

Colorized output with status indicators for terminals that support ANSI colors:

Ghost animation during thinking phases
Colorized tool execution summary
Familiar single-column layout

📋 Minimal Mode (Automatic)

CI environments, pipes, and limited terminals

Plain text, automation-friendly output:

No colors or special characters
Simple "OK/FAILED" status indicators
Pipe-safe formatting for logs

Starting: Take a screenshot of Safari
see screen OK Captured screen (1.2s)
click OK Clicked OK (0.8s)
Task completed in 2m 15s with 5 tools

Terminal Detection

Peekaboo performs comprehensive terminal capability detection:

struct TerminalCapabilities {
    let isInteractive: Bool      // isatty(STDOUT_FILENO)
    let supportsColors: Bool     // COLORTERM + TERM patterns
    let supportsTrueColor: Bool  // 24-bit color detection
    let width: Int               // Real-time dimensions via ioctl
    let height: Int
    let termType: String?        // $TERM environment variable
    let isCI: Bool               // CI environment detection
    let isPiped: Bool            // Output redirection detection
}

Key detection techniques:

Color support via COLORTERM, TERM, and known terminal lists
CI detection for GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, Jenkins, etc.
Terminal size through ioctl with fallbacks to COLUMNS/LINES

The recommended mode is derived from these capabilities, but explicit flags and environment variables always take precedence.

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