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TUI feels visually noisy: user label, large prompt placeholder, and input help take too much space #12

Description

@screenfluent

I like the colored vertical bar on the left side of messages. That already makes the message roles easy to distinguish.

Because of that, the You label above every user message feels unnecessary and adds visual noise.

I think the UI would feel cleaner if the You label was removed and the left border alone was used to distinguish user messages.

There is also a large always-visible prompt text in the input area:

Enter your prompt (Type /help for commands, Ctrl+C to quit)

This takes up too much space in the working area, especially once you already know how to use the app. It is also visually strong enough that it competes with actual conversation content.

The extra help text below the input, like the submit and newline hints, also feels too heavy and adds more clutter than value.

Other tools like claude, codex, and pi do not add this kind of persistent UI noise. opencode does show a small Ctrl+P commands hint in the corner, but it is much less intrusive.

Expected behavior:

  • Less visual noise in the TUI
  • User messages should not need a You label if they are already visually separated
  • The prompt placeholder and input hints should be much more subtle, smaller, optional, or hidden after first use

Actual behavior:

  • The TUI shows several persistent labels and hints that take up space and distract from the conversation

Environment:

  • macOS 15.6.1

  • Apple Silicon

  • kit installed with:

    go install github.com/mark3labs/kit/cmd/kit@latest

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