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🎨 Palette: [UX improvement] Add explicit cancellation hint and option visibility in TUI prompts #133

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🎨 Palette: [UX improvement] Add explicit cancellation hint and option visibility in TUI prompts #133

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3 changes: 3 additions & 0 deletions .jules/palette.md
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
## 2025-06-15 - Explicit Shortcut Hints in TUI
**Learning:** Users in terminal environments often lack clear discoverability for standard escape actions compared to web UIs. Implicit knowledge like "Esc cancels" shouldn't be assumed.
**Action:** Always append explicit cancellation shortcuts (e.g., 'Esc to cancel') in terminal UI prompt footers.
4 changes: 2 additions & 2 deletions libs/terminal_ui.py
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ def _render_selector(self, title, options, selected_index, help_text, default):
style = 'bold green' if index == selected_index else ''
table.add_row(marker, label, style=style)

footer = help_text or 'Use Up/Down arrows and Enter to select.'
footer = help_text or 'Use Up/Down arrows and Enter to select. Esc to cancel.'

@coderabbitai coderabbitai Bot Jun 15, 2026

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⚠️ Potential issue | 🟠 Major | ⚡ Quick win

Esc hint is dropped whenever custom help text is provided.

The current fallback logic keeps "Esc to cancel" only when help_text is empty. For prompts that pass custom help text, cancellation discoverability is still missing.

Suggested fix 
-        footer = help_text or 'Use Up/Down arrows and Enter to select. Esc to cancel.'
+        base_help = help_text or 'Use Up/Down arrows and Enter to select.'
+        footer = base_help if 'esc' in base_help.lower() else f'{base_help} Esc to cancel.'
🤖 Prompt for AI Agents 
Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

In `@libs/terminal_ui.py` at line 70, The footer assignment at line 70 uses a
simple or operator that causes the "Esc to cancel" hint to be completely dropped
when custom help_text is provided. Modify the logic to ensure that whenever a
footer is displayed, it always includes the cancellation hint. Either append the
"Esc to cancel" text to any provided help_text, or construct the footer by
combining the help_text with the cancellation information so that users always
know they can press Esc to cancel, regardless of whether custom help text is
supplied.

self.console.print(Panel.fit(footer, title='Interpreter TUI', border_style='green'))
self.console.print(f"[bold cyan]{title}[/bold cyan]")
self.console.print(table)
Expand All @@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ def _render_selector(self, title, options, selected_index, help_text, default):
def _select_option(self, title, options, default, help_text=None):
if not sys.stdin.isatty():
default_choice = default if default in options else options[0]
answer = Prompt.ask(f"{title}", default=default_choice).strip()
answer = Prompt.ask(f"{title} \\[{'|'.join(options)}]", default=default_choice).strip()
if answer in options:
return answer
for option in options:
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