Rich Knowledge

Enables writing correct Rich terminal UI code — markup, styled output, tables, progress tracking, live displays, logging integration, and custom renderables.

Scope

Consult ../python3-development/references/python3-standards.md when applying shared architecture, typing, testing, or CLI rules; full standards, graphs, and amendment process are documented there.

TRIGGER: Activate when writing Python code that imports from rich or when asked to add terminal UI, colored output, progress bars, tables, syntax highlighting, or pretty printing to a Python CLI.

COVERS:

• Console class, markup syntax, style strings, color formats
• All renderable types (Panel, Table, Tree, Columns, Layout)
• Progress bars (track(), Progress) and Live displays
• RichHandler for stdlib logging and traceback installation
• Text class and programmatic style building
• Syntax, Markdown, Pretty / pprint, JSON
• __rich_console__ and __rich_repr__ protocols for custom objects

DOES NOT COVER:

• Textual (Rich's sibling TUI framework — separate library)
• Rich internals below Segment level
• Pygments theme authoring

Workflow

flowchart TD
    Start([Rich task]) --> Q1{Task type?}
    Q1 -->|Print styled output or markup| Markup[Load console-and-markup.md]
    Q1 -->|Build table, panel, tree, columns| Render[Load renderables.md]
    Q1 -->|Progress bar or live update| Prog[Load progress-and-live.md]
    Q1 -->|Syntax highlight or pretty-print code/data| TextSyn[Load text-and-syntax.md]
    Q1 -->|Logging or traceback display| LogTB[Load logging-and-tracebacks.md]
    Q1 -->|Custom renderable, layout, or highlighter| Adv[Load advanced-patterns.md]

Reference Files

Console and Markup

Console class instantiation and constructor parameters, print() / log() / rule() / status() methods, markup syntax (BBCode-style tags), style definition strings, color formats (named / 256-number / hex / rgb), style attributes (bold/italic/underline/etc.), Style class, Theme class, environment variables, output capture and export.

Load when writing console.print(), applying colors/styles, using Rich markup tags, or configuring console behavior.

references/console-and-markup.md

Renderables

Panel, Table (add_column, add_row, constructor options, column options), Tree (add, style, guide_style), Columns layout, Padding, Rule, Align, and Box styles. Includes constructor signatures and all key parameters verbatim from source docs.

Load when building structured output with boxes, tables, tree views, or multi-column layouts.

references/renderables.md

Progress and Live

track() function, Progress class (add_task, update, advance), task management (visible, indeterminate, transient), all built-in column classes (BarColumn, TextColumn, TimeRemainingColumn, SpinnerColumn, etc.), Live class, and console.status() spinner.

Load when adding progress tracking, spinners, or live-updating output to a CLI.

references/progress-and-live.md

Text and Syntax

Text class (append, stylize, highlight_regex, assemble, from_markup), Syntax class (from_path, line_numbers, theme, line_range), Markdown renderable, pprint / Pretty, JSON renderable, and the __rich_repr__ protocol with @rich.repr.auto decorator.

Load when highlighting code blocks, rendering markdown, pretty-printing data structures, or customizing object repr output.

references/text-and-syntax.md

Logging and Tracebacks

RichHandler constructor parameters (full table), per-message markup/highlighter overrides via extra={}, rich_tracebacks=True for exceptions in log output, tracebacks_suppress for framework frames, traceback.install() for global handler, console.print_exception() parameters, and max_frames behavior.

Load when integrating Rich with Python's logging module, installing a global traceback handler, or improving exception display.

references/logging-and-tracebacks.md

Advanced Patterns

__rich__ protocol (return renderable from object), __rich_console__ protocol (generator yielding renderables or Segments), __rich_measure__ for custom width reporting, Layout class (split_column, split_row, update, named panes), RegexHighlighter subclassing, built-in highlighters, inspect() function, and REPL installation.

Load when writing custom renderables, building multi-pane full-screen layouts, implementing custom syntax highlighting, or debugging Python objects.

references/advanced-patterns.md

Quick Reference

# Install
pip install rich

# Drop-in print replacement
from rich import print
print("[bold red]Hello[/bold red] [green]world[/green]")

# Console (preferred for production code)
from rich.console import Console
console = Console()
console.print("[bold]Hello[/bold]", style="green")
console.rule("[bold red]Section")

# Style string formats
console.print("text", style="bold red underline on white")
console.print("text", style="#af00ff")
console.print("text", style="rgb(175,0,255)")

# Progress bar — simple
from rich.progress import track
for item in track(sequence, description="Processing..."):
    process(item)

# Progress bar — multiple tasks
from rich.progress import Progress
with Progress() as progress:
    task = progress.add_task("[cyan]Working...", total=100)
    progress.update(task, advance=10)

# Logging
import logging
from rich.logging import RichHandler
logging.basicConfig(
    level="NOTSET", format="%(message)s",
    datefmt="[%X]", handlers=[RichHandler()]
)

# Tracebacks
from rich.traceback import install
install(show_locals=True)

# Table
from rich.table import Table
table = Table("Name", "Value")
table.add_row("foo", "bar")
console.print(table)

# Panel
from rich.panel import Panel
console.print(Panel("content", title="Title"))