Expose CLI binaries for each prompt type (e.g. npx @inquirer/select) for shell scripting

[ycmjason]

Hi Inquirer team 👋

Thanks for building such a great library — I’ve used it many times in full-featured CLI tools, and it’s always a pleasure to work with.

I’d love to propose exposing standalone CLI binaries for each prompt type (e.g. @inquirer/select, @inquirer/input, etc), so they can be used directly in bash scripts or one-liners:

✅ Example usage

choice=$(npx @inquirer/select apple banana cherry)
echo "You chose $choice"

This would yield a nice interactive prompt and echo the selected value. It’s a huge quality-of-life improvement over traditional bash.

🌚 Bash comparison

Current (bash built-in):

echo "Choose a fruit:"
select choice in apple banana cherry; do
  break
done
echo "You chose $choice"

Proposed (Inquirer-style):

choice=$(npx @inquirer/select apple banana cherry)
echo "You chose $choice"

Much cleaner, and with better UX (arrows, search, consistent behaviour across platforms).

🔧 Implementation idea

Each package could expose a binary:

• @inquirer/input – for text input
• @inquirer/select – for single choice
• @inquirer/checkbox – for multi-select
• @inquirer/confirm – for yes/no

Each binary would:

• Accept CLI args or JSON input
• Print selected value(s) to stdout
• Support options like --message, --default, etc.

💡 Why this matters

This would make Inquirer incredibly useful for:

• Quick scripts and internal tooling
• Replacing brittle read/select prompts in bash
• Cross-platform, keyboard-friendly CLI input with zero setup

Happy to help with a prototype or PR if this sounds worth exploring!

Thanks again 🙌

[SBoudrias]

In the context of how widely this would be adopted and given the interface need to be different (e.g a fair amount of code), I'm not initially inclined to introduce this within the existing prompt packages.

I'd suggest starting this as a separate package (happy to link to it from Inquirer's README.) And we can review that decision at a later point based on adoption numbers.

[ycmjason]

Sure thing! I am happy to create a seperate package for this! 😄

[ycmjason]

@SBoudrias I'm thinking to publish these as under the @inquirer-cli scope. For example @inquirer-cli/select, @inquirer-cli/input, etc.

Are you happy with me reusing the inquirer name like this, or would you prefer I pick something else? (Coz well tbh, I DO want to trick people into thinking it is somehow associated with @inquirer for that sweet credibility boost 😂 HAHAHAAHAHA)

Happy to use another name tho if you didn't feel like it would be appropriate. 😄

[ycmjason]

Hey @SBoudrias! Just wanted to share a quick update.

After some vibe coding (haha), I managed to hack together @inquirer-cli. Apologies for not waiting for your green light on the name before publishing — I couldn’t come up with anything better, so I just rolled with it.

The packages are now live on npm:

• @inquirer-cli/input
• @inquirer-cli/number
• @inquirer-cli/confirm
• @inquirer-cli/select
• @inquirer-cli/checkbox
• @inquirer-cli/password

The main trick I used was to instruct inquirer to output to stderr instead of stdout, so prompts don’t interfere with shell command substitution like $(...).

Unfortunately, I couldn't get the editor prompt to work due to the same stdout issue with shell substitution — kind of expected, but still a bummer.

That said, everything else is working just as I hoped!

For example, you can do:

fruit=$(npx "@inquirer-cli/select" -c "Apple" -c "Banana" -c "Cherry" "Pick a fruit")
echo "You selected: $fruit"

And it works beautifully!

I'll open a PR soon to add @inquirer-cli to @inquirer's README soon. 😊

Thank you for your support and encouragement so far, and most importantly creating this beautiful library.

[SBoudrias]

That's awesome! Also love vibe-coding, it's impressive the progress that happened recently!

No worries about the packages namespace, it's totally fair use!