SBoudrias/Inquirer.js

> A collection of interactive command-line prompt components for Node.js — the default way JavaScript CLIs ask questions.

GitHub repo · License: MIT

Overview

Inquirer is a set of interactive terminal prompts — text input, single- and multi-select lists, confirms, password fields, autocomplete search, and more — for building command-line wizards in Node.js. It was written by Simon Boudrias (also the maintainer of Yeoman), first published in 2013, and for roughly a decade was the de facto prompt layer for the JavaScript CLI ecosystem: Yeoman generators, npm init flows, framework scaffolders, and countless internal tools depend on it either directly or transitively¹.

The defining fact about Inquirer today is that there are two Inquirers. The original monolithic inquirer package used a single inquirer.prompt([...]) call taking an array of question objects, and was built internally on RxJS observables. Around 2023 the project was rewritten from the ground up into a monorepo of small scoped packages under @inquirer/*, with a completely different API: each prompt is now a standalone async function you await². The rewrite dropped RxJS, shrank install size, and improved startup time, at the cost of breaking the old question-array API and leaving behind a large ecosystem of community prompt plugins that targeted the legacy package.

Both packages are still published. The new @inquirer/prompts is where active development happens; the legacy inquirer package continues to receive version bumps (14.x as of 2026) but is described by the maintainer as maintained-not-developed². New projects are pointed at @inquirer/prompts; existing projects on the old array API are not forced to migrate but get no new features.

Getting Started

npm install @inquirer/prompts

// Modern API — one function per prompt, each awaited
import { input, select, confirm } from '@inquirer/prompts';

const name = await input({ message: 'Project name?' });

const framework = await select({
  message: 'Pick a framework',
  choices: [
    { name: 'Vite', value: 'vite' },
    { name: 'Next.js', value: 'next' },
    { name: 'None', value: null },
  ],
});

const proceed = await confirm({ message: `Scaffold ${name}?` });

Answers are composed by hand (plain variables or an object), not returned as a single merged hash the way the legacy inquirer.prompt([...]) did.

Architecture / How It Works

The current codebase is a pnpm/Turbo monorepo. The pieces that matter:

• @inquirer/prompts — the umbrella package re-exporting every built-in prompt (input, select, checkbox, confirm, search, password, expand, editor, number, rawlist). Each prompt also ships as its own package (@inquirer/input, @inquirer/select, …) so you can depend on just one.
• @inquirer/core — the runtime every prompt is built on. It exposes a React-style hooks API (useState, useEffect, useRef, useKeypress, usePrefix, useMemo) inside a createPrompt factory. A prompt is a render function that returns the string to draw; hooks re-run it on each keypress and the core diffs and repaints the terminal³.
• @inquirer/testing — a harness that renders a prompt to an in-memory stream so you can assert on frames and simulate keystrokes without a real TTY.

Every prompt is a function of two arguments: the prompt config (message, choices, validation) and an optional runtime context — input / output streams (default process.stdin / process.stdout), clearPromptOnDone, and an AbortSignal for cancellation⁴. The AbortSignal support is the clean way to add timeouts or wire prompts into a larger cancellation tree; aborting rejects the prompt promise with an AbortPromptError.

Rendering is line-based redraw over ANSI escape codes, not a full-screen alternate-buffer TUI. Inquirer owns stdin in raw mode for the duration of a prompt and restores it after. This is why it composes with plain console.log output but does not coexist automatically with an already-running node:readline loop — you must pause the readline interface, run the prompt, then resume.

Production Notes

Raw mode and piped stdin. The single most common breakage: when you supply a custom input stream or shadow process.stdin, Node can fail to enter raw mode, and arrow keys / interactivity silently stop working. The fix is to call process.stdin.setRawMode(true) yourself before invoking a prompt⁴. Node normally does this automatically, but loses track when stdin ownership is handed around.

Non-interactive shells. Inquirer cannot run without a TTY. Git hooks (husky, lint-staged), CI steps, and npx nodemon frequently run in non-interactive shells where keypresses never reach the process. Workarounds are environment-specific: my-script < /dev/tty (or exec < /dev/tty in a shell script) to attach a terminal, and --no-stdin when running under nodemon⁴. Code that prompts unconditionally will hang or throw in these contexts — gate prompts behind a process.stdout.isTTY check for scriptable tools.

Ctrl+C handling. Pressing ctrl+c rejects the prompt promise with an ExitPromptError rather than killing the process, so your teardown can run. Unhandled, this prints an ugly stack trace to the user's terminal. Wrap prompt code in try/catch, or add a global uncaughtException listener that silences errors whose name === 'ExitPromptError'⁴. Nearly every non-trivial CLI needs one of these.

The two-package migration. Moving from legacy inquirer to @inquirer/prompts is not a version bump — it is an API rewrite. The array-of-questions object, the when/filter/transformer question fields, and the RxJS-based inquirer.prompt streaming are gone. Third-party prompt types written against the old plugin interface (autocomplete, datepicker, table, tree variants) do not load in the new core and must be rewritten as @inquirer/core prompts. If you rely on a community prompt that was never ported, staying on legacy inquirer is a legitimate choice — it still works, it just won't grow.

ESM and dual publish. The scoped packages ship both ESM and CommonJS builds. In CJS you await the same functions from an async context; there is no default synchronous entry point. Bundlers benefit from the per-prompt packages for tree-shaking, but importing the umbrella @inquirer/prompts pulls the full set.

Localization. @inquirer/i18n is a drop-in replacement for @inquirer/prompts that auto-detects locale from LANG/LC_ALL/etc. and ships a handful of built-in languages; custom locales are registerable. This is separate from the core package, so English-only builds don't pay for it.

When to Use / When Not

Use when:

• You're building a Node.js CLI wizard and want batteries-included prompts (validation, filtering, multi-select, search) without hand-rolling ANSI.
• You want prompts as composable await-able functions that slot into normal control flow.
• You need to build a custom prompt type and want a hooks model plus a real testing harness.

Avoid when:

• You're building a full-screen, multi-pane, continuously-updating terminal UI — that's a TUI framework's job (Ink, blessed), not a prompt library.
• You're targeting non-Node runtimes, or shipping a single static binary where a Node dependency is unwelcome.
• Your flow must run headless / non-interactively by default — prompts fight CI and hooks unless carefully guarded.
• You depend on a legacy community prompt plugin that was never ported and can't move to the new core.

Alternatives

• clack/clack (@clack/prompts) — smaller, opinionated, visually polished prompt set; use when you want a modern minimal look and don't need Inquirer's breadth or custom-prompt API.
• terkelg/prompts — lightweight, dependency-light single-package prompts; use when bundle size and simplicity matter more than an extensible core.
• enquirer — feature-rich prompts (was briefly Yeoman's default); use when you want many prompt types in one package with heavy theming.
• google/zx or webpro/tasuku — use when your "prompts" are really scripting glue and you'd rather orchestrate shell than build a wizard.
• vadimdemedes/ink — use instead when you actually need a React-rendered full-screen terminal UI, not a linear question flow.

History

References

1. ^ Inquirer.js repository and README — SBoudrias/Inquirer.js. https://github.com/SBoudrias/Inquirer.js
2. ^ README note on the ground-up rewrite and the still-maintained legacy inquirer package. https://github.com/SBoudrias/Inquirer.js#readme
3. ^ @inquirer/core — hooks-based prompt-building API (createPrompt, useState, useKeypress). https://github.com/SBoudrias/Inquirer.js/tree/main/packages/core
4. ^ README "Advanced usage" and "Recipes": context options (input/output/signal), raw mode, non-interactive shells, ctrl+c / ExitPromptError. https://github.com/SBoudrias/Inquirer.js#readme
5. ^ inquirer version history on npm. https://www.npmjs.com/package/inquirer?activeTab=versions
6. ^ @inquirer/prompts version history on npm (1.0.0 published 2023-04-24). https://www.npmjs.com/package/@inquirer/prompts?activeTab=versions

Tags

typescript, javascript, nodejs, cli, command-line, interactive-prompts, terminal, prompt, developer-tools, tui