SmartCLI — drive terminal TUIs MCP server

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SmartCLI

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A local Python toolkit for driving, perceiving, and rendering the terminal — three agent skills over one pluggable PTY + pyte core.

Let an AI drive, perceive, and render real terminal programs. SmartCLI reads the actual screen with a pyte cell model — not a byte pipe — so it knows which menu row is highlighted, presses the right keys, and waits for the screen to settle. Below: it drives the real lazygit TUI end-to-end (arrow-key navigation, opening a commit diff, highlighting a branch) — no script, no mock.

pip install smartcli-toolkit

Requires Python 3.10 or newer. The install includes the shared Python library, the persistent TUI driver, and the stdio MCP server.

Drive something in 30 seconds

Copy-paste this. It starts a real Python REPL under a PTY, waits for the prompt (never a blind sleep), types into it, and reads the screen back:

pip install smartcli-toolkit
SID=$(smartcli-tui start --cmd "python3 -i -q" --cols 80 --rows 24 --json | python3 -c "import json,sys;print(json.load(sys.stdin)['sid'])")
smartcli-tui wait-regex --id $SID ">>> " --timeout-ms 15000
smartcli-tui send-line --id $SID "print(6*7)"
smartcli-tui wait-regex --id $SID "42"          # prints the cell grid it sees
smartcli-tui close --id $SID

On Windows use --cmd "py -i -q". Swap the command for vim, htop or lazygit and the same five verbs drive those too — that is the whole point: wait-regex and friends react to what the screen actually shows, so an agent never guesses whether its keystroke landed.

Want the same thing against a real editor, end to end and verifiable? examples/drivevim.py drives the actual vim binary — opens a file, appends a line, saves, and then checks the filesystem**, not the screen:

python examples/drive_vim.py
#   [OK ] vim painted its screen
#   [OK ] file contents visible on screen
#   [OK ] alternate screen is active
#   [OK ] vim entered insert mode (so G and o both landed)
#   [OK ] typed text appears on screen
#   [OK ] vim restored the main screen on exit
#   [OK ] file on disk really changed

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.