// the find
nunomaduro/termwind
🍃 In short, it's like Tailwind CSS, but for the PHP command-line applications.
Termwind lets you style PHP CLI output using Tailwind CSS class names — write HTML with Tailwind-like utility classes, and it renders them as ANSI-escaped terminal output. It's from Nuno Maduro, the author of Pest and several Laravel tools, and it ships as a core dependency inside Laravel Artisan commands. If you're building PHP CLI tools and already think in Tailwind, this removes most of the manual escape-code math.
The mental model transfer is real: if you know `px-2 bg-green-600 text-white`, you already know how to use this. Responsive breakpoints based on terminal width columns are a genuinely useful idea that most CLI libraries ignore entirely. The component coverage is solid — tables, code blocks with line numbers, description lists, ordered/unordered lists all work. Test coverage is file-per-component with Pest, which makes it easy to verify exactly what a given element produces.
The Tailwind class subset is frozen — you get what's listed in the README and nothing more, so anything not in that table requires the `style()` escape hatch or you're stuck. There's no layout beyond block/flex/inline, so anything grid-like or multi-column is off the table. The `ask()` function is a thin wrapper around Symfony's question helper and doesn't support autocomplete or multi-select, making it a weak link for interactive CLIs. At 2.5k stars and 89 forks, adoption outside the Laravel ecosystem appears limited, which matters if you need to find help or report bugs — the issue tracker is quiet.