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Asciicast Output #109
Description
This is probably out of scope but would be nice to have asciicast output (Output: out.cast).
I initally wanted gif for the readme and asciicast for the mdbook documentation but then decided against gif due to it's size.
Managed to record it by simply spawning an asciinema recording within tmux.
Keeping size in sync with the other outputs could be challenge but there are also gif, svg,.. generators available for asciicast.
It might even provide an alternative to the chrome dependency (which pushes my cpu to the limit).
- width/height with tmux
- hide/show support with pause/resume
Hide
Type "tmux"
Enter
Type "tmux resize-window -x 108 -y 24"
Enter
Type "asciinema rec --overwrite out.cast"
Enter
Sleep 1s
Show
# ...
Hide
Type "exit"
Enter
Show
Example
Asciicast
Gif
GIF output with agg (ignore the missing symbols, didn't get the font right)
agg --font-family "RobotoMono Nerd Font Mono,Noto Color Emoji" carapace-bin.cast out.gif
Svg
SVG output with svg-term-cli (nice output but high load for playing it)
cat carapace-bin.cast | svg-term --out out.svg
related #105
Reacted by Max Rydahl Andersen, setop, alteriks, Achille Lacoin, Sebastian Pipping, Jiahao Guo, Pavel Zwerschke, cocowalla, Hernán Cervera, Dwarak Govind Parthiban and 1 more
Reacted by setop, Achille Lacoin, Hernán Cervera and Dwarak Govind Parthiban
Activity
maaslalani commentedon Oct 30, 2022
This is quite interesting @rsteube, nice work and really clever stuff.
There is definitely something here. Would be really cool to remove the dependency on the browser all together and make terminal GIFs purely in the terminal eventually 😄
maxandersen commentedon Nov 25, 2022
The .svg format would be the bomb. Lets you copy/paste the commands shown.
drupol commentedon Nov 5, 2023
I'm also looking for this !
Thanks @rsteube for the snippet ! I use it and it works very well!
jackspirou commentedon Aug 6, 2025
I started a discussion #644 around a working (for me) SVG implementation fork at https://github.com/agentstation/vhs - might be relevant! 😄
dimk90 commentedon Aug 25, 2026
Check out S-VHS: a small bash wrapper around
tmux+asciinema+aggthat automates exactly what the OP sketched here - tape-like recordings withSetOutputaccepting.cast,.gifand animated.svgfrom one script. No Chromium involved.co2water commentedon Sep 14, 2026
+1. The two-step version that works today: record with asciinema, then https://github.com/co2water/svgcast turns the .cast into an animated svg (dark mode aware, 3-8x smaller than the gif). If VHS can emit asciicast this becomes a pipeline for everyone in this thread.