# peterbrittain/asciimatics

A cross platform package to do curses-like operations, plus higher level APIs and widgets to create text UIs and ASCII art animations

Repository: https://github.com/peterbrittain/asciimatics
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/asciimatics
Language: Python
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: python, curses, console, tui, ascii-art, cross-platform, terminal
Last push: 2026-07-04T13:05:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 63/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 90, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4158, "days_push": 60, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4303, forks 265 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:41.699395+00:00)

## What it is
Asciimatics is a cross-platform Python library providing curses-like low-level console operations plus higher-level APIs and widgets for building full-screen text UIs and ASCII art animations. It handles coloured text, cursor positioning, keyboard/mouse input, screen resizing, and offers effects like sprites, particle systems, and image-to-ASCII conversion.

## Use cases
- build interactive full-screen text UI forms in Python
- create ASCII art animations and effects in the terminal
- replace curses with a cross-platform console API
- convert images to ASCII art
- handle keyboard and mouse input in a terminal app
- make retro-style console games or demos

## When to choose
- you need a portable TUI library that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux without platform-specific code
- you want to build text UIs with widgets or ASCII animations in pure Python
- you want a friendlier, higher-level alternative to raw curses

## When to avoid
- you need a rich graphical GUI rather than a text-based interface
- you need a modern GPU-accelerated or web-based UI framework
- you require very complex widget toolkits beyond basic forms and controls

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: gui, animation, cli, templating
- domain: developer-tools, cross-platform, graphics
- platform: python, windows, cross-platform, cli
- tags: tui, curses, ascii-art, text-ui, terminal, widgets, console, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- peterbrittain/asciimatics (main) score 63

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:41.699395+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:21:49.902291+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/peterbrittain/asciimatics (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:41.699395+00:00, sha 3c0944d6733e)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/asciimatics/json (fetched 2026-08-29T09:10:56.996911+00:00, sha fd02037156a4)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.