customize-response-style

name	customize-response-style
description	Guide for customizing OhMyCode's terminal output style and rendering. Use when user wants to change colors, formatting, or how responses look in the terminal.

Customize OhMyCode's Response Style

Change how OhMyCode renders output in the terminal — colors, formatting, tool call display, token usage display.

When to Use

• User says "change the colors", "make output cleaner", "customize the theme"
• User wants to modify how tool calls, errors, or streaming text are displayed
• User wants to add/remove elements from the output (e.g., hide token counts)

Where Rendering Happens

All rendering logic is in ohmycode/cli.py → render_stream() function. It consumes events from the conversation loop and prints them using rich.console.Console.

Current rendering:

Event	Current Style
TextChunk	Plain text, streamed character by character
ToolCallStart	▶ <tool_name> in cyan + params in dim
ToolCallResult (success)	✓ + green output (truncated to 500 chars)
ToolCallResult (error)	✗ + red error message
TurnComplete	Tokens: prompt=X completion=Y total=Z in dim

How to Customize

Option 1: Edit render_stream() Directly

Open ohmycode/cli.py and find async def render_stream(). Modify the rich markup:

# Change tool call header color from cyan to blue
console.print(f"\n[blue]▶ {event.tool_name}[/blue]", highlight=False)

# Add a box around tool results
from rich.panel import Panel
console.print(Panel(output, title="Tool Result", border_style="green"))

# Hide token usage
# Comment out or delete the TurnComplete rendering block

Option 2: Add Rich Themes

Create a custom theme at the top of cli.py:

from rich.theme import Theme

ohmycode_theme = Theme({
    "tool.name": "bold magenta",
    "tool.success": "green",
    "tool.error": "bold red",
    "tool.params": "dim italic",
    "status": "dim cyan",
    "prompt": "bold yellow",
})

console = Console(theme=ohmycode_theme)

Then use style names in print calls:

console.print(f"▶ {event.tool_name}", style="tool.name")

Option 3: Add Markdown Rendering for AI Responses

Replace plain text streaming with rich Markdown rendering:

from rich.markdown import Markdown

# In render_stream(), after collecting all TextChunks for a turn:
if collected_text:
    console.print(Markdown(collected_text))

Trade-off: Markdown rendering requires buffering the full response (no streaming feel). A hybrid approach: stream plain text, then re-render as Markdown after the turn completes.

Option 4: Customize the REPL Prompt

In run_repl(), change the prompt appearance:

# Simple change
user_input = session.prompt("ohmycode> ")

# With color (prompt_toolkit style)
from prompt_toolkit.formatted_text import HTML
user_input = session.prompt(HTML("<ansigreen>ohmycode</ansigreen><ansiyellow>></ansiyellow> "))

# With model name
user_input = session.prompt(f"[{config.model}]> ")

Customization Ideas

Change	Where	Difficulty
Change colors	render_stream() rich markup	Easy
Add panels/borders around tool results	render_stream() + rich.Panel	Easy
Show full tool params (not truncated)	render_stream() truncation logic	Easy
Hide token usage	render_stream() TurnComplete block	Easy
Add timestamps to output	render_stream()	Easy
Markdown rendering	render_stream() + rich.Markdown	Medium
Custom REPL prompt	run_repl() prompt_toolkit config	Medium
Add spinner during tool execution	render_stream() + rich.Status	Medium
Progress bar for long operations	render_stream() + rich.Progress	Medium
Split-pane layout (output + status)	rich.Layout	Hard

Testing Changes

After modifying cli.py:

1. Quick visual test: ohmycode -p "List python files here" --mode auto
2. Test tool calls: ohmycode -p "Read pyproject.toml" --mode auto
3. Test errors: ohmycode -p "Read /nonexistent/file" --mode auto
4. Test REPL: ohmycode → type a message → /exit

Tips

• Use rich documentation: https://rich.readthedocs.io/
• Preview colors: python3 -c "from rich import print; print('[bold red]Red[/bold red] [green]Green[/green]')"
• Keep changes in render_stream() — don't modify core/loop.py for display concerns
• The REPL prompt uses prompt_toolkit, not rich — they have different styling systems