Terminal UI

The terminal UI is for interactive, keyboard-first diagnostics inside a terminal. It uses the same core operations as the CLI, desktop app, and MCP server.

An illustration of /discover in the terminal UI, not a capture. The real screen shows a progress line while the run is going. When it finishes, each host appears as a small tree of mac, vendor and name lines. Local interface activity is along the bottom.

When to use it

Use the TUI when:

• You want an interactive session but prefer terminal workflows.
• You are connected to a server or workstation without a desktop shell.
• You want command history, autocomplete, and readable summaries in one screen.
• You are iterating on targets and ports by hand.

Use the CLI when a script needs JSON, YAML, CSV or Markdown. Use the desktop app when you need richer tables, filtering, multi-tab review, or row details.

Start the TUI

netscli

The TUI starts without a subcommand. From there, type commands in the input area.

Command entry

Common interactive commands mirror the CLI operations:

/discover 192.168.1.0/24
/discover 192.168.1.0/24 --resolve
/scan 192.168.1.1 22,80,443
/scan 192.168.1.254 --udp
/sweep 192.168.1.0/24 22,80,443
/dns netscli.com
/reverse 192.168.1.1
/mdns --timeout 3000
/interfaces
/arp

Use /help and completion to discover the available options. The TUI also includes /config for terminal-session settings and /export for saving the current session output.

/discover and /sweep show hostnames only when you add --resolve (or -r), as the CLI does. /dns takes the record type as --record <type>, as -r <type>, or as a second word, as in /dns netscli.com MX.

/arp shows the neighbor table. /arp add <ip> <mac>, /arp del <ip> and /arp clear change it, which needs administrator rights, and they run as soon as you press Enter.

A command that cannot read what you typed says so and does nothing. /ping host abc is an error, not four pings, and an extra word in /discover is an error, not something dropped.

Values with spaces

Words are split on spaces. /pcap and /export also read quotes, for a filter such as tcp port 80 and a path such as C:\My Scans\out.md. Either kind of quote works. A backslash is an ordinary character, so Windows paths can be typed as they are.

/pcap eth0 --filter "tcp port 80" --duration 10
/export md --output "C:\My Scans\out.md"
/export json --output ~/scans/out.json

A ~ at the start of an export path means your home folder. Without the quotes, --filter tcp port 80 is an error that says to add them.

Keys

Key	What it does
Enter	Runs the command. On a command name that is only partly typed, such as /e, it finishes the name first, as Tab does, and a second Enter runs it.
Tab	Finishes the command name from the highlighted suggestion.
Up, Down	Move through the suggestions while a command name is being typed, and through earlier commands otherwise.
PageUp, PageDown	Scroll the output.
Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End	Jump to the top or the bottom of the output. While a command runs, Home and End do the same.
Esc or Ctrl+C	Cancels a running command. With nothing running, press it twice to exit.

/exit also leaves the TUI.

On Linux and macOS a paste goes into the input as text, with its line breaks turned into spaces, so pasting several lines runs nothing. NetsCLI does not ask for this on Windows, so there a pasted line break is read as Enter. Paste one line at a time.

Session behavior

The TUI is designed for investigation sessions:

• Command history stays close to the current result.
• Status colors highlight open ports, filtered ports, host state, and errors.
• Local interface and traffic status remain visible while you work.
• /export md or /export json can preserve useful investigation output. Without --output it writes to ~/.netscli/exports, and it will not replace a file that already exists at a path you give.

Names and values that come from the network, such as an mDNS name or a DNS TXT record, have their control characters and text-reordering characters replaced with . before they are shown or exported. A device on your network cannot send an escape sequence to your terminal, or into the file, that way.

Set NO_COLOR to run the TUI without colour. Bold stays, and the selected row in /config is shown reversed.

Output model

The TUI favors readable summaries over exhaustive machine-readable structures. If you need stable structured output, run the same operation through the CLI with --json or --yaml.

Limitations

Terminal rendering depends on the terminal emulator and font. Wide tables, long IPv6 addresses, and long DNS names may wrap or truncate more aggressively than in the desktop app.