The Problem
Terminal output is a pain when you need to visualize complex systems. You ask your agent to generate a diagram or compare requirements, and you’re greeted with a mess of ASCII art or, worse, a wall of pipes and dashes. This works for trivial cases, but once you hit anything moderately complex, it becomes unreadable. You might as well be reading hieroglyphics.
What This Does
Enter visual-explainer, a skill that transforms your terminal's dry output into elegant HTML pages. It lives in the prompts/ directory with handy templates like diff-review.md and plan-review.md. When you run commands like /diff-review, it generates a full HTML page that includes everything from architecture diagrams to KPI dashboards. You don’t need a build step, and it works straight out of the box—just clone the repo into your agent's skills directory.
The templates in the prompts/ folder are straightforward. For example, the command /plan-review compares a plan against your codebase, complete with risk assessments and context for future reference. Output files go into ~/.agent/diagrams/, so you can review them later without having to wrestle with terminal scrollback.
Real-World Use
Imagine you’re reviewing a feature branch against main. You simply run the command:
/diff-review
The agent generates an HTML page that shows a neat before-and-after view of your architecture, highlights good and bad code, and even provides a decision log with confidence indicators. You can then share this with your team instead of sending them a screenshot of a terminal window that looks like a cat walked across your keyboard.
The Bottom Line
visual-explainer is a solid solution for anyone who regularly deals with complex terminal outputs. It’s particularly useful for teams that need to present their work clearly and concisely. However, if your projects are small and simple, this might feel like overkill. Overall, it’s a practical tool that turns your agent into a capable visual assistant without the hassle of additional dependencies. Give it a shot if you've ever cursed at your terminal's output.