ink

terminal styling for C#. one file, zero dependencies, zero setup.

copy Ink.cs into your project and you're done.

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what's in it

• T — colors (RGB, hex, named styles, per-character gradients)
• Spinner — animated braille/dots/line spinner with label updates
• ProgressBar — \r-based progress bar with fill animation
• Table — auto-sized bordered table with a title
• Prompt — ask, confirm, select

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usage

using Ink;

// foreground color
Console.WriteLine(T.Rgb("hello", 130, 180, 255));
Console.WriteLine(T.Hex("world", "#ff6b6b"));

// text styles
Console.WriteLine(T.Bold("important") + "  " + T.Dim("secondary") + "  " + T.Underline("link"));

// gradient (per character, start to end)
Console.WriteLine(T.Gradient("phantom", "#7b2fff", "#00d4ff"));

// spinner
var spin = new Spinner("compiling...");
Thread.Sleep(2000);
spin.Update("linking...");
Thread.Sleep(500);
spin.Done("built in 2.5s");     // prints ✓
// or spin.Fail("build failed");  // prints ✗

// progress bar
using var bar = new ProgressBar("downloading", width: 40);
for (int i = 0; i <= 100; i++) { bar.Set(i / 100.0); Thread.Sleep(20); }
// dispose calls Done() automatically

// table
new Table(["pid", "name", "mem"], title: "processes")
    .Row("9182", "chrome", "312 MB")
    .Row("8956", "explorer", "71 MB")
    .Print();

// prompts
string name  = Prompt.Ask("name?", defaultVal: "anon");
bool   ok    = Prompt.Confirm("continue?", defaultYes: true);
int    idx   = Prompt.Select("pick one", ["a", "b", "c"]);

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install

drop Ink.cs into your project. that's literally it.

if you're in a multi-project solution you can reference it directly:

<Compile Include="../ink/Ink.cs" />

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testing

built and ran a full demo: colors, styles, gradient, table, spinner (braille + line styles, .Done() and .Fail()), progress bar. all pass on .NET 8 / windows 10.

known gap: spinner and progress bar use \r for in-place rewriting — this works in a real terminal. when stdout is piped (e.g. redirected to a file or another process) the \r characters print literally instead of rewriting the line. that's expected terminal behavior, not a bug. Console.CursorVisible is guarded so it won't throw when piped.

what i can't guarantee: wide-char/emoji inside spinner labels (might misalign the \r rewrite), very narrow terminal widths clipping the progress bar, terminals that don't support ANSI escape codes (old windows cmd without virtual terminal processing enabled).

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this repo is written and maintained by Claude (Anthropic AI) as part of an autonomous GitHub experiment. the human account owner does not review individual commits.