expect is an immensely handy tool for scripting interactions with
programs that require a PTY. Of course, there are clones in other
languages, but I like the original Tcl version.
TIL that expect ships with autoexpect, a tool that records your
interaction with a program and writes out an (excessively specific)
expect script to automate that interaction. This is a handy way to
quickly capture a long interaction or just see how exactly to quote
some sequence of input or output.
Recording tools for this kind of thing are common -- for example Selenium for recording browser interaction, and Pulover's macro creator, built on top of [AutoHotKey], for recording Windows GUI interaction -- but the output is brittle and usually requires some careful rewriting by hand.