Rich Terminal Output Skill When to Activate Activate this skill when: Building CLI applications Displaying structured data (tables) Showing progress for long operations Creating error/status panels Pretty-printing objects for debugging Enhancing logging output Installation uv add rich

Quick test

python -c "from rich import print; print('[bold green]Rich working![/]')" Core Concepts Console Object from rich . console import Console console = Console ( )

Basic output

console . print ( "Hello, World!" )

Styled output

console . print ( "[bold red]Error:[/] Something went wrong" ) console . print ( "[green]Success![/] Operation completed" ) Markup Syntax "[bold]Bold[/]" "[italic]Italic[/]" "[red]Red text[/]" "[blue on white]Blue on white background[/]" "[bold red]Combined styles[/]" "[link=https://example.com]Click here[/]" Drop-in Print Replacement from rich import print print ( "[bold cyan]Styled text[/]" ) print ( { "key" : "value" } )

Auto-pretty-prints

Tables from rich . console import Console from rich . table import Table console = Console ( ) table = Table ( title = "User List" ) table . add_column ( "ID" , style = "cyan" , justify = "right" ) table . add_column ( "Name" , style = "magenta" ) table . add_column ( "Email" , style = "green" ) table . add_column ( "Status" , justify = "center" ) table . add_row ( "1" , "Alice" , "alice@example.com" , "✓ Active" ) table . add_row ( "2" , "Bob" , "bob@example.com" , "✓ Active" ) table . add_row ( "3" , "Charlie" , "charlie@example.com" , "✗ Inactive" ) console . print ( table ) Panels from rich . console import Console from rich . panel import Panel console = Console ( )

Simple panel

console . print ( Panel ( "Operation completed!" ) )

Styled panel

console . print ( Panel ( "[green]All tests passed![/]\n\n" "Total: 42 tests\n" "Time: 3.2s" , title = "Test Results" , border_style = "green" ) )

Error panel

console . print ( Panel ( "[red]Connection refused[/]\n\n" "Host: localhost:5432" , title = "[bold red]Error[/]" , border_style = "red" ) ) Progress Bars Simple Progress from rich . progress import track import time for item in track ( range ( 100 ) , description = "Processing..." ) : time . sleep ( 0.01 ) Multiple Tasks from rich . progress import Progress with Progress ( ) as progress : task1 = progress . add_task ( "[red]Downloading..." , total = 100 ) task2 = progress . add_task ( "[green]Processing..." , total = 100 ) while not progress . finished : progress . update ( task1 , advance = 0.9 ) progress . update ( task2 , advance = 0.6 ) time . sleep ( 0.02 ) Syntax Highlighting from rich . console import Console from rich . syntax import Syntax console = Console ( ) code = ''' def hello(): print("Hello, World!") ''' syntax = Syntax ( code , "python" , theme = "monokai" , line_numbers = True ) console . print ( syntax ) Tree Displays from rich . console import Console from rich . tree import Tree console = Console ( ) tree = Tree ( "[bold blue]MyProject/[/]" ) src = tree . add ( "[bold]src/[/]" ) src . add ( "main.py" ) src . add ( "config.py" ) tests = tree . add ( "[bold]tests/[/]" ) tests . add ( "test_main.py" ) console . print ( tree ) Logging Integration import logging from rich . logging import RichHandler logging . basicConfig ( level = logging . INFO , format = "%(message)s" , handlers = [ RichHandler ( rich_tracebacks = True ) ] ) logger = logging . getLogger ( "myapp" ) logger . info ( "Application started" ) logger . error ( "Connection failed" ) Pretty Tracebacks from rich . traceback import install

Call once at startup

install ( show_locals = True )

All exceptions now have beautiful tracebacks

Common Pitfalls Reuse Console Instance

❌ Bad

def show ( msg ) : Console ( ) . print ( msg )

Creates new instance each time

✅ Good

console

Console ( ) def show ( msg ) : console . print ( msg ) Escape User Input from rich . markup import escape username = "user[admin]"

❌ Bad - brackets break markup

console . print ( f"[blue] { username } [/]" )

✅ Good

console . print ( f"[blue] { escape ( username ) } [/]" ) Handle Non-TTY import sys console = Console ( force_terminal = sys . stdout . isatty ( ) ) CLI Application Pattern import click from rich . console import Console from rich . panel import Panel console = Console ( ) @click . command ( ) @click . argument ( 'filename' ) def process ( filename ) : console . print ( f"[bold]Processing:[/] { filename } " ) with console . status ( "[bold green]Working..." ) : result = do_work ( filename ) if result . success : console . print ( Panel ( f"[green]Processed { result . count } items[/]" , title = "Success" ) ) else : console . print ( f"[red]Error:[/] { result . error } " ) When NOT to Use Rich Non-interactive scripts (output piped) Server-side logging Performance-critical loops Minimal dependency requirements Related Resources See AgentUsage/rich_formatting.md for complete documentation including: Advanced table customization Spinner and status displays Console recording Integration patterns