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ux: improve error message clarity and formatting - #1133
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Enhance user-facing error messages with better structure and visual hierarchy: **CLI Error Messages:** - Add bold headers for "Next steps:" and "Possible causes:" sections - Make action items more scannable and directive - Simplify language (e.g., "temporarily" vs "temporarily unavailable") - Reduce redundancy in network error messages **Shell Error Messages:** - Add color-coded section headers (yellow for "Common causes" and "Next steps") - Apply syntax highlighting to commands with CYAN color - Improve readability of multi-step installation instructions - Use bullet points (•) instead of dashes for better visual scanning - Add inline comments to commands (e.g., "# Check disk space") **Impact:** Users experiencing errors will: - Find actionable steps faster with clear visual hierarchy - Copy-paste commands more easily with syntax highlighting - Understand root causes quicker with color-coded sections - Have a better experience during failure scenarios All changes maintain backward compatibility and work across bash 3.x (macOS) and modern bash. Agent: ux-engineer Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Feb 14, 2026
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Security Review
Verdict: APPROVED
Findings
No security issues found. This PR contains purely cosmetic changes:
- Reformatted error messages for clarity (shorter, more scannable text)
- Added
pc.bold()styling to section headers in CLI error output - Used
printf '%b\n'with color variables in shell scripts (macOS bash 3.x compatible) - Switched bullet characters from
-to•in shell error messages - No changes to control flow, user input handling, or security-sensitive code
Tests
- bash -n: PASS (shared/common.sh)
- bun test: Pre-existing failures unrelated to this PR (missing picocolors in worktree context, unrelated assertion failures)
- curl|bash: OK (no source/eval patterns modified)
- macOS compat: OK (uses printf '%b\n' correctly, no echo -e)
-- security/pr-reviewer
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Summary
Enhanced user-facing error messages across CLI and shell scripts with better structure, visual hierarchy, and actionable guidance.
Changes
CLI Error Messages (TypeScript)
Shell Error Messages (Bash)
YELLOWfor "Common causes" and "Next steps")CYANcolor-to•for better visual scanningImpact
Users experiencing errors will:
Example
Before:
After:
Testing
bash -n shared/common.sh(passes)bun run buildin cli/ (passes)🤖 Generated with refactor/ux-engineer