README

Display a colored ASCII banner after composer install / composer update.

¹

Every composer install ends the same boring way: autoload files generated, then silence.

composer-fanfare replaces that with a project-specific full-stop — a colored ASCII banner that confirms which project just finished and lets you convey your own message: "Made with ❤️ by the maintainers".

Useful when you're proud of your work, juggle multiple repos, or just want a little fun after the thousandth composer install.

Stays respectful: silent in CI, plain in non-TTY shells, suppressed under --quiet.

Install

composer require wazum/composer-fanfare

Important

Composer 2.2+ asks for plugin approval on first run. Interactive shells prompt you; in CI or non-interactive setups, allow it explicitly:

composer config allow-plugins.wazum/composer-fanfare true

Configure

Drop a plain-text template anywhere in your project (e.g. art/banner.txt) and reference it from composer.json:

{
    "extra": {
        "fanfare": {
            "template": "art/banner.txt",
            "colors": "sunset"
        }
    }
}

• template — path to the template, relative to the project root.
• colors — one of:
  • a hex string ("#ff6ec7")
  • an array of hex stops (["#ff6ec7", "#7873f5"]) — colors interpolate smoothly between stops
  • a preset name: aurora, catppuccin, doom, dracula, fire, gruvbox, iceberg, matrix, monokai, nord, ocean, pride, solarized, sunset, synthwave
  • "random" — picks a random preset on each install/update
  • omit for plain output
• direction — controls how the gradient flows:
  • "vertical" (default) — one color per line, top to bottom
  • "horizontal" — color per character, left to right (whitespace stays uncolored)
  • "diagonal" — flows top-left to bottom-right across the whole banner
• transform — optional palette transform applied after color resolution:
  • "reverse" — reverses the stop order (e.g. sunset reversed → sunrise)
• animation — optional reveal animation:
  • "typewriter" — types each visible character with a small per-character delay
  • "shimmer" — slides the gradient across the banner; vertical/horizontal rotate the static colors, diagonal does a smooth phase shift across the whole plane
  • "drip" — reveals cells in random order in small bursts, like raindrops landing on the banner
  • omit for an instant render. Skipped automatically in non-TTY / non-decorated terminals.
• footer — true (default) prints a dim line below the banner with project name + version, PHP version, and locked package count. Set to false to hide.

Note

The banner falls back to plain text when NO_COLOR is set or output isn't a TTY. Composer's --quiet mode suppresses it entirely via the IO layer. If any banner line is wider than the current terminal, the banner is skipped silently to avoid wrapping artefacts.

Disabling

Skip the banner for a single run by setting COMPOSER_FANFARE=0 inline:

COMPOSER_FANFARE=0 composer install

Or disable it globally for the current shell or CI environment:

export COMPOSER_FANFARE=0

Setting values from the CLI

If you'd rather not hand-edit composer.json, every key can be set with composer config:

composer config extra.fanfare.template art/banner.txt
composer config extra.fanfare.colors synthwave
composer config extra.fanfare.direction diagonal
composer config extra.fanfare.transform reverse

Booleans and arrays need --json so the value is stored with the right type:

composer config --json extra.fanfare.colors '["#ff6ec7","#7873f5"]'
composer config --json extra.fanfare.footer false

Remove a key with --unset:

composer config --unset extra.fanfare.transform

Color depth

Truecolor escapes are emitted by default. The renderer downgrades automatically based on COLORTERM and TERM:

Preset gallery

plain	aurora	catppuccin	doom
dracula	fire	gruvbox	iceberg
matrix	monokai	nord	ocean
pride	solarized	sunset	synthwave

Preview

Pick a preset without running an install:

composer fanfare:preview --gallery                                           # render every preset
composer fanfare:preview --preset=fire                                       # render just one
composer fanfare:preview --preset                                            # list preset names
composer fanfare:preview --gallery --direction=diagonal --transform=reverse  # combine

--direction and --transform accept the same values as the matching extra.fanfare keys. The preview uses your project's configured extra.fanfare.template if there is one, otherwise it falls back to a small built-in banner.

Creating a template

The template is any plain-text file. For large ASCII letters from a word, the classic tool is figlet:

brew install figlet                  # macOS
sudo apt-get install -y figlet       # Debian / Ubuntu

figlet -f standard "your project" > art/banner.txt

Try other fonts with -f slant, -f big, -f small, etc.; figlist lists what's installed. Prefer a browser? patorjk.com/software/taag is a popular generator with the same fonts.

Another option is toilet, which offers its own font set and can be useful for compact banner styles:

brew install toilet                  # macOS
sudo apt-get install -y toilet       # Debian / Ubuntu

toilet -f pagga "composer-fanfare" > art/banner.txt

Note

Banner output relies on the font your terminal renders monospaced text in. Block-shading glyphs (█▀▄░ from pagga/smblock/block) and box-drawing glyphs (┏━┓┃ from future/emboss) are covered by every modern terminal font (JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Cascadia, Hack, Menlo). Sparser ranges like braille (⡠⢀⣀ from smbraille) are not — if a glyph shows up as □, switch to a font with wider Unicode coverage (DejaVu Sans Mono, Cascadia Code, Iosevka).

License

MIT.

Footnotes

1. The company names, project names, and email addresses shown in the demo (Atelier Prime, harbor sync, Neon District, meridian labs, lumen forge, etc.) are fictional — invented to illustrate the kind of personal banner you might write for your own project. ↩