spawn-term

Runs child processes in a terminal-oriented session with grouping, status, and formatted output.

npm install spawn-term

import { createSession } from 'spawn-term';

const session = createSession({ header: 'Project checks' });
session.spawn('npm', ['test'], { stdio: 'inherit' }, { group: 'tests' }, (err) => {
  if (err) console.error(err);
});
session.waitAndClose(() => console.log('done'));

The public API is named: createSession creates a session, session.spawn starts a process, and waitAndClose waits for active processes before cleaning up. Process options include group and expanded; session options include header, showStatusBar, and interactive.

Sessions using Ink 8 require Node.js 22 or newer. The ESM build exposes createSession on Node.js 19 and newer, but that export guard does not guarantee that Ink can run on Node.js 19 through 21. The CommonJS entry point and older Node.js versions expose only formatting helpers. On first use, createSession may download Ink into the install-module-linked cache and link it into the package, so it needs network access and a writable cache when Ink is not already available.