Text Recipes Cookbook
Use when building common text features or looking up quick recipes — background colors, line numbers, character limits, links, placeholders.
Workflow Skills
SKILL.md
Use when building common text features or looking up quick recipes — background colors, line numbers, character limits, links, placeholders.
Family: Front Door Skills
Quick, working solutions to the most common “how do I…” questions about Apple text views.
When to Use
Section titled “When to Use”- User asks “how do I [specific text thing]?” and you need a direct answer.
- You need a working code snippet, not architecture guidance.
- The question maps to a common text task that doesn’t need a full skill.
Quick Index
Section titled “Quick Index”Find the recipe number below, then see recipes.md for the code.
| # | Recipe | Framework |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Background color behind a paragraph | TextKit 1 / TextKit 2 |
| 2 | Line numbers in a text view | TextKit 1 |
| 3 | Character/word limit on input | UITextView delegate |
| 4 | Text wrapping around an image | NSTextContainer |
| 5 | Clickable links (not editable) | UITextView |
| 6 | Clickable links (editable) | UITextView delegate |
| 7 | Placeholder text in UITextView | UITextView |
| 8 | Auto-growing text view (no scroll) | Auto Layout |
| 9 | Highlight search results | Temporary attributes |
| 10 | Strikethrough text | NSAttributedString |
| 11 | Letter spacing (tracking/kern) | NSAttributedString |
| 12 | Different line heights per paragraph | NSParagraphStyle |
| 13 | Indent first line of paragraphs | NSParagraphStyle |
| 14 | Bullet/numbered lists | NSTextList / manual |
| 15 | Read-only styled text | UITextView |
| 16 | Detect data (phones, URLs, dates) | UITextView |
| 17 | Custom cursor color | UITextView |
| 18 | Disable text selection | UITextView |
| 19 | Programmatically scroll to range | UITextView |
| 20 | Get current line number | TextKit 1 |
Platform Coverage
Section titled “Platform Coverage”Recipes show UIKit (iOS) code by default. See the Platform Note at the top of recipes.md for a UIKit → AppKit translation table. Recipes that use only NSTextStorage, NSAttributedString, and NSParagraphStyle work on both platforms without changes.
Quick Decision
Section titled “Quick Decision”- Need architecture guidance, not a snippet ->
/skill apple-text(router) - Need paragraph style details (line height, spacing) ->
/skill apple-text-line-breaking - Need formatting attribute catalog ->
/skill apple-text-formatting-ref - Need measurement or sizing ->
/skill apple-text-measurement
Related Skills and Agents
Section titled “Related Skills and Agents”- For measurement, exclusion paths, or layout details -> launch textkit-reference agent
- For paragraph style, line breaking, or formatting attributes -> launch rich-text-reference agent
- For attachment views (tables, custom views) -> launch rich-text-reference agent
- For find/replace or editor interaction details -> launch editor-reference agent
Documentation Scope
Section titled “Documentation Scope”This page documents the apple-text-recipes workflow skill. Use it when the job is a guided review, implementation flow, or integration pass instead of a single API lookup.
Related
Section titled “Related”apple-text: Use when the user has an Apple text-system problem but the right specialist skill is not obvious, or when the request mixes multiple text subsystems.apple-text-measurement: Use when text is clipping, truncating unexpectedly, or when measuring text size, calculating boundingRect, or sizing views to fit text content.apple-text-exclusion-paths: Use when text needs to wrap around images or shapes, building multi-column text layout, or using exclusion paths, linked containers, and NSTextTable.apple-text-line-breaking: Use when configuring line break mode, hyphenation, truncation, line height, paragraph spacing, or tab stops via NSParagraphStyle.
Sidecar Files
Section titled “Sidecar Files”skills/apple-text-recipes/recipes.md
Full SKILL.md source
---name: apple-text-recipesdescription: Use when building common text features or looking up quick recipes — background colors, line numbers, character limits, links, placeholderslicense: MIT---
# Text Recipes Cookbook
Quick, working solutions to the most common "how do I..." questions about Apple text views.
## When to Use
- User asks "how do I [specific text thing]?" and you need a direct answer.- You need a working code snippet, not architecture guidance.- The question maps to a common text task that doesn't need a full skill.
## Quick Index
Find the recipe number below, then see [recipes.md](recipes.md) for the code.
| # | Recipe | Framework ||---|--------|-----------|| 1 | Background color behind a paragraph | TextKit 1 / TextKit 2 || 2 | Line numbers in a text view | TextKit 1 || 3 | Character/word limit on input | UITextView delegate || 4 | Text wrapping around an image | NSTextContainer || 5 | Clickable links (not editable) | UITextView || 6 | Clickable links (editable) | UITextView delegate || 7 | Placeholder text in UITextView | UITextView || 8 | Auto-growing text view (no scroll) | Auto Layout || 9 | Highlight search results | Temporary attributes || 10 | Strikethrough text | NSAttributedString || 11 | Letter spacing (tracking/kern) | NSAttributedString || 12 | Different line heights per paragraph | NSParagraphStyle || 13 | Indent first line of paragraphs | NSParagraphStyle || 14 | Bullet/numbered lists | NSTextList / manual || 15 | Read-only styled text | UITextView || 16 | Detect data (phones, URLs, dates) | UITextView || 17 | Custom cursor color | UITextView || 18 | Disable text selection | UITextView || 19 | Programmatically scroll to range | UITextView || 20 | Get current line number | TextKit 1 |
## Platform Coverage
Recipes show UIKit (iOS) code by default. See the **Platform Note** at the top of [recipes.md](recipes.md) for a UIKit → AppKit translation table. Recipes that use only NSTextStorage, NSAttributedString, and NSParagraphStyle work on both platforms without changes.
## Quick Decision
- Need architecture guidance, not a snippet -> `/skill apple-text` (router)- Need paragraph style details (line height, spacing) -> `/skill apple-text-line-breaking`- Need formatting attribute catalog -> `/skill apple-text-formatting-ref`- Need measurement or sizing -> `/skill apple-text-measurement`
## Related Skills and Agents
- For measurement, exclusion paths, or layout details -> launch **textkit-reference** agent- For paragraph style, line breaking, or formatting attributes -> launch **rich-text-reference** agent- For attachment views (tables, custom views) -> launch **rich-text-reference** agent- For find/replace or editor interaction details -> launch **editor-reference** agent