vhs-cli-demoslisted

# Capturing CLI & TUI apps with VHS [VHS](https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs) (by Charm) drives a real PTY through a headless terminal and records exactly what a user would see — so captures are pixel-accurate, scriptable, and reproducible in CI. It's the right tool for README GIFs, docs/marketing stills, release demos, and terminal visual-regression tests. This skill is the methodology; it transfers to any CLI or TUI regardless of language (Go, Rust, Python, Node, a shell script — VHS only sees the terminal). The single most important thing to internalize: **a `.tape` is a screenplay, not a config file.** You're directing a short scene — what's typed, how long each beat holds, when the camera clicks. Two failure modes dominate, and both are covered below: captures that look *wrong* (loading spinners, drifting dates, empty state — a determinism problem) and GIFs that are *enormous* (10-20 MB — a file-size problem with a one-line lossless fix). ## The essentials (if you read nothing else) Three things separate a capture that ships from one that embarrasses you. Get these right and the rest is polish: 1. **Always optimize GIFs losslessly.** Raw VHS GIFs are 10-20 MB of redundant frames. Run `gifsicle -O3` (lossless, 20-30× smaller, zero quality loss) — via the bundled `scripts/optimize_gif.sh` — or bake it into your pipeline. Never ship a raw VHS GIF, and never reach for lossy compression as the default fix. 2. **Make it deterministic, and size it generously.**