alexeyraspopov/picocolors

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1748 stars · 52 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

picocolors is a tiny, zero-dependency JavaScript library for coloring and formatting terminal output with ANSI escape codes. It is significantly smaller and faster than alternatives like chalk, supports Node.js and browsers, and respects the NO_COLOR convention.

Use cases

• colorize CLI output in a Node.js script
• add ANSI colors to console logs in a build tool
• replace chalk to shrink node_modules size
• format terminal text with bold, italic, and background colors
• respect NO_COLOR in a CLI tool
• style output in a CJS or ESM project

When to choose

• you need terminal colors with minimal bundle or node_modules footprint
• performance of color formatting matters in a hot path
• you want a zero-dependency, CJS/ESM-compatible color library
• you need NO_COLOR support out of the box

When to avoid

• you need advanced features like 256-color or truecolor detection chains
• you want rich theming or template-literal styling like chalk's tagged templates
• you are not targeting JavaScript/Node.js environments

Facets

library · maturity stable

cli developer-tools developer-tools cli cross-platform ansi-colors terminal-formatting zero-dependency no-color command-line nodejs

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