feat: migrate CLI to Ink for richer terminal UX

[prosdev]

Overview

Replace chalk + ora with Ink to provide a modern, React-based CLI experience similar to modern AI coding agent CLIs.

Current State

• Using chalk for colors and text styling
• Using ora for simple spinners
• 10 commands with ~191 instances of chalk/ora usage
• Limited interactivity and visual feedback

Proposed Enhancement

Migrate to Ink (React for CLIs) to provide:

Benefits

• ✅ Rich layouts - Multi-column displays, boxes, panels for better information architecture
• ✅ Live updates - Real-time progress indicators, streaming search results
• ✅ Interactive components - Select menus, inputs, collapsible trees for exploration
• ✅ Better organization - Component-based architecture using React patterns
• ✅ Stateful UI - Proper state management for complex interactions
• ✅ Professional UX - Polished interface matching modern developer tool expectations

Trade-offs

• ⚠️ Larger dependency footprint (Ink + React vs lightweight chalk)
• ⚠️ More complex architecture (component-based vs simple string formatting)
• ⚠️ Migration effort across 10 commands
• ⚠️ Potential terminal compatibility concerns (mitigated by Ink's wide support)

Implementation Plan

Phase 1: Prototype (1 command)

• Install Ink dependencies (ink, react, etc.)
• Create Ink component structure in packages/cli/src/ui/
• Migrate dev search command as prototype
  • Live search results rendering
  • Progress indicators
  • Formatted result cards
• Validate UX and gather feedback

Phase 2: High-Value Commands

Prioritize commands with complex output that benefit most:

• dev index - Progress bars, file counts, status board
• dev stats - Tables, charts, formatted metrics
• dev explore - Interactive tree/list navigation
• dev gh - Rich issue/PR display with formatting

Phase 3: Remaining Commands

• dev init - Welcome screen, setup wizard
• dev update - Diff display, change summary
• dev clean - Confirmation prompt, progress
• dev compact - Optimization metrics
• dev plan - Task breakdown display

Phase 4: Polish & Enhancements

• Add dev interactive mode for guided exploration
• Implement keyboard shortcuts
• Add help overlays
• Custom themes/color schemes
• Performance optimization

Success Metrics

• Commands render cleanly in all major terminals (iTerm2, Terminal.app, Windows Terminal, etc.)
• No performance degradation vs current chalk/ora implementation
• Improved user feedback in survey/dogfooding
• Maintains 100% test coverage

Dependencies

• ink: ^4.0.0
• react: ^18.0.0
• ink-spinner: For loading states
• ink-select-input: For interactive menus
• ink-text-input: For user input
• ink-table: For tabular data

References

• Ink documentation: https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink
• Modern AI coding agent CLIs for UX inspiration

Related

• Builds on PR refactor: integrate @lytics/kero logger and reorganize tests #48 (kero logger integration)
• Complements structured logging with rich visual feedback