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VHS — terminal demo recorder

charmbracelet/vhs records terminal sessions to GIF / MP4 / WebM from a .tape script. It headlessly replays your typed commands inside a virtual terminal and produces a deterministic, reviewable artifact — perfect for README demos, bug reproductions, and PR review aids.

  • Install:
    • macOS — Homebrew (managed by dot_ansible/roles/devtools/tasks/main.yml macOS list). On macOS, Homebrew also pulls in ttyd and ffmpeg automatically as runtime deps.
    • Linux — GitHub release tarball into ~/.local/bin/vhs (managed by dot_ansible/roles/devtools/tasks/main.yml # --- vhs (Charm) --- block). Runtime deps ttyd and ffmpeg are NOT auto-installed — see Linux runtime dependencies below.
  • Verify: vhs --version
  • Status in this repo: installed, no .tape files yet. Create them under docs/_demos/*.tape if you start recording.

Hello world

cat <<'TAPE' > /tmp/hello.tape
Output /tmp/hello.gif
Set FontSize 18
Set Width 800
Set Height 400
Type "echo Hello, VHS"
Enter
Sleep 1s
TAPE

vhs /tmp/hello.tape
file /tmp/hello.gif    # → GIF image data

Open the GIF in any image viewer (open on macOS, xdg-open on Linux, or drop into Slack / a PR description).

Linux runtime dependencies

vhs shells out to ttyd (web-based PTY) and ffmpeg (video encoder). On Linux these are usually missing — install them once on each host that will record:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install ffmpeg
# ttyd has no .deb in the default repos — use the prebuilt static binary:
curl -L "https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd/releases/latest/download/ttyd.$(uname -m)" \
  -o ~/.local/bin/ttyd && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/ttyd

# Verify
ttyd --version
ffmpeg -version | head -1

The ansible role deliberately does NOT auto-install these — ffmpeg is a heavy dep (50+ MB transitively) and ttyd doesn't have a clean apt path on every supported Ubuntu release. Recording is opt-in, so the dep install is opt-in too.

If vhs runs but produces a 0-byte output, that's almost always a missing ttyd or ffmpeg. vhs --help lists the path it expects.

.tape script primer

A .tape file is a flat list of commands. Highlights:

# Output target (one per file)
Output demo.gif
# Output demo.webm    # also supported
# Output frames/      # dump individual PNG frames

# Settings (apply to whole tape)
Set Shell zsh
Set FontSize 16
Set FontFamily "MonoLisa, JetBrainsMono Nerd Font"
Set Theme "Catppuccin Mocha"
Set Width 1200
Set Height 600
Set Padding 20
Set TypingSpeed 50ms
Set PlaybackSpeed 1.0
Set LoopOffset 0%

# Hide setup commands (typed but not shown in output)
Hide
Type "cd ~/scratch && clear"
Enter
Show

# Visible interactions
Type "ls -la"
Enter
Sleep 1s

Type "echo waiting"
Enter
Sleep 500ms

# Press special keys
Ctrl+C
Backspace 5
Enter
Tab
Escape

# Wait for a prompt regex before continuing (vhs ≥ 0.7)
Wait /\$\s$/

Full reference: vhs --help and the upstream examples/ directory.

Recording a real workflow demo

Skeleton for showing off something this repo actually does — e.g., fleet-apply:

# docs/_demos/fleet-apply.tape
Output fleet-apply.gif
Set Shell zsh
Set FontSize 16
Set Theme "Catppuccin Mocha"
Set Width 1400
Set Height 800
Set TypingSpeed 60ms

Hide
Type "cd ~/.local/share/chezmoi && clear"
Enter
Show

Type "just fleet-apply --status"
Enter
Sleep 3s

Type "just fleet-apply"
Enter
Sleep 8s

Type 'q'    # exit watch view

Then commit the .tape (small, reviewable) and the rendered .gif (binary, large but reviewable in PR diff). Keep tapes deterministic — avoid commands that hit the network or clocks unless that's the point of the demo.

Where to put tapes

This repo doesn't have an established convention yet. When you record the first one, suggested layout:

docs/_demos/
  fleet-apply.tape
  fleet-apply.gif
  sesh-tmux.tape
  sesh-tmux.gif

Underscore prefix keeps it out of the MkDocs nav. Embed in a doc page with a normal markdown image:

![fleet-apply demo](../_demos/fleet-apply.gif)

If GIFs end up large (> 5 MB), reach for Output demo.mp4 and embed via raw HTML — most browsers play inline MP4 in markdown viewers, and the file is typically 3–10× smaller.

Tips

  • Reproducible recordings — pin Set TypingSpeed, Set PlaybackSpeed, and avoid wall-clock-dependent commands. Two vhs run X.tape invocations should produce byte-identical output.
  • Catppuccin theme — Set Theme "Catppuccin Mocha" matches this repo's tmux / starship aesthetic.
  • vhs serve — runs a local HTTP UI for iterating on a tape. Saves the round-trip of vhs file && open file.gif.
  • CI rendering — keep .tape source-of-truth and re-render .gif in CI on demand. The repo doesn't currently do this; would need ffmpeg + ttyd in the CI image.
  • Don't record secrets — vhs captures whatever is on screen; use Hide blocks around any cat ~/.env or gh auth status that prints tokens.

See also

  • Glow, Gum, Freeze — the rest of the Charm CLI ecosystem
  • Freeze — for static code/output screenshots, where a GIF is overkill