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Dev Log 047 – Hanging Indents and Padded Text

🧵 Dev Log 047 – Hanging Indent Victory

CLI output now wraps beautifully—with full hanging indent support.


🔧 Problem

Multiline text (e.g., description, dokuUri, intent) was wrapping in an ugly way:

  • New lines didn’t align under the first line's value.
  • ANSI styles broke layout.
  • chalk[color] inconsistencies silently failed.

✅ Fixes

  • Created wrapWithHangingIndent() using wrap-ansi + strip-ansi.
  • Added paddedLongText() to wrap log lines cleanly while respecting label alignment.
  • Hardened log logic: fallback if chalk[color] is invalid.

🎯 Before vs After

"description": "This is a long string...
                and this wraps terribly."

becomes:

"description": "This is a long string meant to demonstrate a hanging indent
                inside a terminal. Each new line aligns under the first."

🧠 Notes

  • Don't trust .length on styled strings.
  • chalk[color] must be validated at runtime.
  • Terminal UX deserves design care too.

🔜 Next Up

  • Integrate paddedLongText() into trace, review, and inspect.
  • Optionally allow users to override indent width per theme.

⏱️ Wrapped at 5:00 PM. Took 4 hours, 3 crashes, 2 errors, 1 win.

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