meow VS vorpal

As you can see, cli.tsx also looks pretty similar to React's root file, but, it has something more to offer using meow library. meow is a popular library that helps you build nice CLI applications gives you access to create usage docs and handles args and flags.

You will notice that it is using meow to read the command and flags. Afterward, it passes the flags to the ui component and renders it. meow is a helper library to parse arguments. The text passed to meow() is the help text shown when you call create-micro-service --help.

Here the App component is being imported using a special importJSX command. Meow is a library that allows us to make interactive CLIs. Here look at the render statement. A React element is being created where the App Element is passed as the first argument (ie the JSX part of the element) and then cli.flags is an arrow of props that will be passed into the element. This is where the name prop is coming from!!!

I occasionally try that as well and it sometimes helps but not for things like node apps that use https://vorpal.js.org REPLs. They just aren't usable in shell-mode.

Got it, so more about the general idea of using Node to interact with a shell. Fair points but I'm not sure that's where zx falls. I'm looking at it in relation to projects like commander, oclif, and vorpal— frameworks for authoring and packaging local-use CLI tools written in JS, typically aimed at people who know JS and work in a terminal but don't know shell scripting. Those have the overhead of learning a framework, and don't do anything to help you work with the shell. zx seems to come from the other direction: instead of an esoteric framework, shell concepts and shell commands in a Node script.

Assuming the project uses node, and admittedly it's a lil overkill, but you could use vorpal.

Are you wanting to run your nodejs app, and then control it within the same terminal it is running in? If so, take a look at vorpal