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chalk-advanced

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Style terminal output with Chalk. Use when adding colors to CLI output, formatting log messages, building styled terminal UIs, or creating developer tools with colored output.

General

What this skill does


# Chalk

## Overview

Chalk styles terminal strings with colors, bold, underline, and backgrounds. ESM-only since v5. Chain styles fluently. Widely used in CLIs for status messages, errors, and formatted output.

## Instructions

### Step 1: Basic Styling

```typescript
import chalk from 'chalk'

console.log(chalk.green('✓ Success'))
console.log(chalk.red.bold('✗ Error: file not found'))
console.log(chalk.yellow('⚠ Warning: deprecated API'))
console.log(chalk.blue.underline('https://example.com'))
console.log(chalk.gray('  (verbose details)'))

// Background colors
console.log(chalk.bgRed.white.bold(' ERROR ') + ' Something went wrong')
console.log(chalk.bgGreen.black.bold(' PASS ') + ' All tests passed')
```

### Step 2: Composable Styles

```typescript
// Define reusable styles
const styles = {
  error: chalk.red.bold,
  success: chalk.green,
  warn: chalk.yellow,
  info: chalk.blue,
  dim: chalk.gray,
  highlight: chalk.cyan.bold,
  label: chalk.bgBlue.white.bold,
}

function log(level: keyof typeof styles, msg: string) {
  const prefix = {
    error: '✗', success: '✓', warn: '⚠', info: 'ℹ', dim: '·', highlight: '→',
  }
  console.log(`${styles[level](prefix[level] || '·')} ${msg}`)
}

log('success', 'Project created')
log('error', 'Build failed')
log('info', `Using ${styles.highlight('TypeScript')} template`)
```

### Step 3: CLI Output Formatting

```typescript
// Table-like output
function printStats(stats: Record<string, number>) {
  const maxKey = Math.max(...Object.keys(stats).map(k => k.length))
  for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(stats)) {
    const label = chalk.gray(key.padEnd(maxKey))
    const val = value > 0 ? chalk.green(value.toString()) : chalk.red(value.toString())
    console.log(`  ${label}  ${val}`)
  }
}

printStats({ 'Files changed': 12, 'Lines added': 847, 'Lines removed': 231, Warnings: 0, Errors: 0 })
```

## Guidelines

- Chalk v5+ is ESM-only. Use `import chalk from 'chalk'`, not require.
- Chalk respects `NO_COLOR` and `FORCE_COLOR` env vars automatically.
- Chain methods: `chalk.red.bold.underline('text')` — order doesn't matter.
- Use template literals: `` chalk`{red Error:} {bold ${message}}` ``
- For complex terminal UIs, combine with ora (spinners) and cli-table3 (tables).
Files: 2
Size: 4.1 KB
Complexity: 14/100
Category: General

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