Huh — Build Terminal Forms and Prompts in Go

Introduction

Huh is a Go library by Charm for building rich interactive forms in the terminal. It provides pre-built components like text inputs, selects, multi-selects, confirms, and file pickers that render beautifully using the Bubble Tea framework underneath.

What Huh Does

• Renders multi-step terminal forms with keyboard navigation
• Provides input, select, multi-select, confirm, and text area fields
• Supports theming via Lip Gloss styles for consistent branding
• Validates user input with custom or built-in validators
• Works in accessible mode for screen readers and simple terminals

Architecture Overview

Huh builds on Charm's Bubble Tea TUI framework. Each form field is a Bubble Tea model with its own Update/View cycle. A Form groups fields into ordered steps, managing focus transitions and collecting results into bound Go variables via pointer references.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Add to your module: go get github.com/charmbracelet/huh
• No external runtime or daemon required
• Customize appearance with huh.NewTheme() and Lip Gloss styles
• Set accessible mode with huh.NewForm().WithAccessible(true) for CI environments
• Compose fields into groups and groups into multi-page forms

Key Features

• Declarative API: define forms with a builder pattern in a few lines
• Keyboard-driven UX with Vim-style and arrow key navigation
• Built-in spinner component for async operations during form flow
• Supports piped input and non-interactive environments gracefully
• Lightweight with no CGo dependencies

Comparison with Similar Tools

• Bubble Tea — lower-level TUI framework; Huh is a form abstraction on top of it
• Survey (Go) — similar form library but less visually polished
• promptui — simpler prompts, fewer field types, less active maintenance
• Inquirer.js — Node.js equivalent; Huh brings the same UX to Go
• tview — full TUI widget toolkit; heavier than what forms need

FAQ

Q: Can Huh forms run in CI without a TTY? A: Yes. Enable accessible mode or pipe values via stdin for non-interactive runs.

Q: Does Huh support custom validation? A: Yes. Each field accepts a Validate(func(string) error) callback.

Q: Can I theme the form to match my CLI brand? A: Yes. Huh exposes a full theming API using Lip Gloss styles for colors, borders, and spacing.

Q: Is Huh compatible with Windows terminals? A: Yes. It works on Windows Terminal, PowerShell, and cmd via Bubble Tea's cross-platform rendering.

Sources

• https://github.com/charmbracelet/huh
• https://charm.sh/blog/huh/