What happened?

If a render error occurs in the Ink UI (e.g., a raw string returned inside a ), the CLI can crash so hard that the terminal becomes unresponsive and even Ctrl+C no longer works. The process appears stuck in a broken render loop.

Example error seen in the terminal:

ERROR Text string " " must be rendered inside component

node_modules/ink/build/reconciler.js:156:19

153: },
154: createTextInstance(text, _root, hostContext) {
155: if (!hostContext.isInsideText) {
156: throw new Error(Text string "${text}" must be rendered inside <Text> component);
157: }
158: return createTextNode(text);
159: },
...

Example user flow that triggered this recently:

• Pressing ? to open the shortcuts UI, which renders a panel with inline spacing.

What did you expect to happen?

• Render errors should never hard‑crash the CLI.
• The UI should fall back to a safe minimal screen that still allows Ctrl+C to exit.
• Errors should be logged so they can be debugged later.
• (Optional) Provide a lightweight “failsafe” input handler outside Ink so Ctrl+C always works even
  if the UI crashes.

Analysis / Recommendations

1. Add a top‑level error boundary around the Ink app:
   • Catches render exceptions.
   • Shows a minimal safe fallback.
   • Logs the error (and stack) to a debug log or crash file.
   • Keeps stdin listeners alive so Ctrl+C still works.
2. Add a failsafe SIGINT handler outside the React tree:
   • If the UI crashes, Ctrl+C still terminates the process cleanly.
3. Enforce safe rendering practices:
   • Lint/test rules to prevent raw strings inside .
   • Small helper components for layout spacing that always render .
4. Add a smoke test for rendering:
   • Render key UI surfaces and assert no render exceptions.

Client information

> /about
# paste output here

Login information

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Anything else we need to know?

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