Add TTY detection for non-interactive environments by tashian · Pull Request #210

Add TTY detection for non-interactive environments by tashian · Pull Request #210 · smallstep/cli-utils

Add CanPrompt() function to check if a terminal is available before
attempting interactive prompts. This helps provide better error messages
in non-interactive environments like systemd services, GitHub Actions,
Ansible, or Docker containers.

Changes:
- Add CanPrompt() in ui/ui.go that checks stdin and /dev/tty
- Add RequiredInputError type in errs/errs.go for descriptive errors
- Improve error messages in preparePromptTerminal/prepareSelectTerminal
- Add golang.org/x/term dependency for terminal detection

Fixes smallstep/cli#674

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

tashian added a commit to smallstep/cli that referenced this pull request

Jan 22, 2026

Add support for non-interactive environments by:
- Adding --non-interactive global flag (also STEP_NON_INTERACTIVE env var)
- Checking for terminal availability before prompting for passwords
- Returning helpful error messages when prompts fail in CI/systemd/Docker

This change requires smallstep/cli-utils#210 which adds:
- ui.CanPrompt() for TTY detection
- errs.RequiredInputError for descriptive error messages

Fixes #674

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Address review feedback:
- Replace golang.org/x/term with go-isatty (already an indirect dep)
- Add Cygwin terminal detection for better Windows support
- Improve generic error message to guide users to --help

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

- CanPrompt() now checks STEP_NON_INTERACTIVE env var first, returning
  false when set to "1" or "true"
- Prompt(), PromptPassword(), and Select() now check CanPrompt() before
  attempting to prepare the terminal, providing clearer error messages
- Added tests for CanPrompt() non-interactive mode behavior

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>