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Workshop TUI

The workshop includes an interactive Terminal User Interface (TUI) that lets you browse, run, and inspect all exercises from a single window — no need to type commands manually.

Launching the TUI

python workshop.py

This opens a full-screen terminal application:

┌──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ▸ 0 — Setup          │                                               │
│   Connection Test     │  (exercise README / output shown here)        │
│ ▸ 1 — LLM Foundations│                                               │
│   Chat Completion     │                                               │
│   System Prompts      │                                               │
│   Structured Outputs  │                                               │
│ ▸ 2 — Tools & ...     │                                               │
│   ...                 │                                               │
├──────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Enter to run · F5 re-run                              ✔ PASSED       │
└──────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

How It Works

Action What Happens
Arrow keys Navigate the exercise list on the left — the README is shown on the right
Enter Run the highlighted exercise
F5 Re-run the currently selected exercise
q Quit the TUI

When you run an exercise:

  1. The TUI launches the exercise as a subprocess (python exercises/...)
  2. The right panel shows ⏳ Running while it executes
  3. When it finishes, the full output is displayed in the right panel
  4. A status badge shows ✔ PASSED or ✘ FAILED

Why a TUI?

During workshops, participants often struggle with:

  • Remembering which exercise to run next
  • Typing long file paths correctly
  • Losing track of which exercises they've already completed

The TUI solves all of these — it shows the full exercise catalog, runs them with one keypress, and tracks pass/fail status.

Under the Hood

The TUI is built with Textual, a modern Python TUI framework. Here's what workshop.py does:

  • Exercise catalog — A list of all exercises organized by chapter, defined as a simple Python data structure at the top of the file
  • README display — When you highlight an exercise, it reads and renders the corresponding README.md from the exercise folder
  • Subprocess execution — Exercises run via subprocess.run() in a background thread so the UI stays responsive
  • Output capture — stdout/stderr are captured and displayed as Markdown in the right panel
  • Status tracking — Each exercise gets a pass/fail badge that persists while the TUI is open

Not required

The TUI is a convenience tool. Every exercise can also be run directly from the terminal: 

python exercises/01_llm_basics/01_chat_completion.py