# p-gen/smenu

smenu started as a lightweight and flexible terminal menu generator, but quickly evolved into a powerful and versatile CLI selection tool for interactive or scripting use.

Repository: https://github.com/p-gen/smenu
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/smenu
Language: C
License: MPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: terminal, interactive, selection, console, menus, command-line-interface, command-line, cli, tui, shell, shell-scripts, c
Last push: 2026-04-17T22:14:15+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 57/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 77, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3629, "days_push": 138, "days_rel": 464, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 1}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2492, forks 53 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:56.539162+00:00)

## What it is
smenu is a terminal-based selection filter that reads words from stdin or a file and presents them in a scrolling, interactive window for keyboard/mouse selection. It works like sed but for selection, usable both interactively and in shell scripts.

## Use cases
- pick one option from a list in a shell script
- interactive fuzzy selection of words in the terminal
- build terminal menus for command-line tools
- select multiple items from piped input
- replace long option lists in shell scripts with a picker
- filter and choose entries from a file interactively

## When to choose
- you need an interactive selection step inside shell scripts or pipelines
- you want a lightweight C tool that works on any terminfo-capable terminal
- you need multi-select or flexible layouts for terminal choices

## When to avoid
- you need a full GUI menu system
- you want a fuzzy finder with preview panes like fzf's richer integrations
- you need Windows-native support without a Unix-like environment

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: cli, terminal-ui, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: bsd, cli, cross-platform
- tags: tui, selection-filter, interactive-menu, shell-scripting, c, command-line, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- p-gen/smenu (main) score 57

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.539162+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 2026-08-30T02:27:46.440553+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/p-gen/smenu (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:56.539162+00:00, sha b495ce6cbcad)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.