Select & Multiselect

Both prompts require a TTY — they reject with PromptError { code: "not-a-tty" } when stdin is piped. Use text and parse the value yourself for scripted flows.

Select

import { select } from "@arshad-shah/clif/prompts";

const color = await select({
  message: "Pick a color",
  default: "blue",
  options: [
    { label: "Red", value: "red" },
    { label: "Green", value: "green" },
    { label: "Blue", value: "blue", hint: "recommended" },
    { label: "Purple", value: "purple", disabled: true },
  ],
});

Navigate with ↑/↓ (or j/k), confirm with Enter. Disabled options are visible but skipped by the cursor. Space is intentionally ignored on single-select so muscle memory carries over to multiselect.

Multiselect

import { multiselect } from "@arshad-shah/clif/prompts";

const features = await multiselect({
  message: "Select features to enable",
  default: ["ts"],
  options: [
    { label: "TypeScript", value: "ts" },
    { label: "ESLint", value: "eslint" },
    { label: "Prettier", value: "prettier" },
    { label: "Vitest", value: "vitest" },
  ],
  required: true,
  min: 1,
  max: 3,
});

Space toggles the current option, a toggles all enabled options, Enter confirms. If the selection violates min / max / required, an inline error is shown and Enter is blocked until the constraint is satisfied.

Select / Multiselect options

Option	Type	Description
message	string	Prompt message
options	SelectOption[]	Choices to display
default	T / T[]	Initial cursor (select) or pre-checked items (multi)
required	boolean	Multi: require at least one selection
min / max	number	Multi: lower / upper bound on selection count

Option shape

Field	Type	Description
label	string	Display text
value	T	Returned value (generic, defaults to string)
hint	string	Hint shown after label
disabled	boolean	Greyed out, not selectable

Cancellation

Ctrl+C rejects the promise with PromptError { code: "cancelled" }. Catch it to perform cleanup before exiting:

import { select, PromptError } from "@arshad-shah/clif/prompts";

try {
  await select({ message: "Pick", options: [...] });
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof PromptError && err.code === "cancelled") {
    process.exit(130); // 128 + SIGINT
  }
  throw err;
}