Tips and tricks excerpts from charmbracelet/vhs tapes

README.md

Source: path:**/*.tape

• Using Up and Left to rewrite previous commands (source)

  Type "grex -c 'regexes are awesome' 'regexes are awful'"
  Sleep 3s
  Enter
  Sleep 10s
  
  Up
  Left 42
  Type " --verbose"
  Sleep 3s
  Enter
  Sleep 15s
  Type "clear"
  Enter

  

• Using Type and Ctrl+C for conversational comments (source)

  Sleep 1s
  Type "# You can pipe one or multiple directory paths to cd" Sleep 1s Ctrl+C
  Type "ghq list --full-path | cd" Sleep 1s Enter
  Sleep 1s

  

• Using Screenshot to capture static demo screenshots (source)

  Down
  Type "i" Sleep 0.5s
  Screenshot default.png Sleep 0.5s
  Escape Sleep 0.5s
  Screenshot rendered.png Sleep 0.5s

  

• Using Tab for auto-completion (source)

  # Accept auto-complete
  Tab Sleep 1s Enter Sleep 4s

• Capture simplfied vhs commands in comments (source)

  # VHS documentation
  #
  # Output:
  #   Output <path>.gif               Create a GIF output at the given <path>
  #   Output <path>.mp4               Create an MP4 output at the given <path>
  #   Output <path>.webm              Create a WebM output at the given <path>
  #
  # Require:
  #   Require <string>                Ensure a program is on the $PATH to proceed
  #
  # Settings:
  #   Set FontSize <number>           Set the font size of the terminal
  #   Set FontFamily <string>         Set the font family of the terminal
  #   Set Height <number>             Set the height of the terminal
  #   Set Width <number>              Set the width of the terminal
  #   Set LetterSpacing <float>       Set the font letter spacing (tracking)
  #   Set LineHeight <float>          Set the font line height
  #   Set LoopOffset <float>%         Set the starting frame offset for the GIF loop
  #   Set Theme <json|string>         Set the theme of the terminal
  #   Set Padding <number>            Set the padding of the terminal
  #   Set Framerate <number>          Set the framerate of the recording
  #   Set PlaybackSpeed <float>       Set the playback speed of the recording
  #
  # Sleep:
  #   Sleep <time>                    Sleep for a set amount of <time> in seconds
  #
  # Type:
  #   Type[@<time>] "<characters>"    Type <characters> into the terminal with a
  #                                   <time> delay between each character
  #
  # Keys:
  #   Backspace[@<time>] [number]     Press the Backspace key
  #   Down[@<time>] [number]          Press the Down key
  #   Enter[@<time>] [number]         Press the Enter key
  #   Space[@<time>] [number]         Press the Space key
  #   Tab[@<time>] [number]           Press the Tab key
  #   Left[@<time>] [number]          Press the Left Arrow key
  #   Right[@<time>] [number]         Press the Right Arrow key
  #   Up[@<time>] [number]            Press the Up Arrow key
  #   Down[@<time>] [number]          Press the Down Arrow key
  #   Ctrl+<key>                      Press the Control key + <key> (e.g. Ctrl+C)
  #
  # Display:
  #   Hide                            Hide the subsequent commands from the output
  #   Show                            Show the subsequent commands in the output
  
  # https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs

• Using Set to customize animated gif rendering (source)

  Set Shell "bash"
  Set FontSize 16
  Set Padding 2
  Set Margin 2
  Set Width 1280
  Set Height 1024
  Set Framerate 60
  Set TypingSpeed 150ms
  Set PlaybackSpeed 0.5
  Set CursorBlink false

  

• Defaulting PS1 with Hide and Show to clear shell prompt formatting before recording (source)

  Hide
  Type "export PS1=''" Enter
  Ctrl+L
  Type 'clear' Enter
  Show

  

• Creating alias with Hide and Show to simulate release behavior (source)

  Hide
  Type 'alias doist="./run_doist_fixtures.sh"'
  Enter
  Type clear
  Enter
  Show
  
  Type "doist add 'do the laundry' -d tomorrow"
  Sleep 500ms
  Enter 1
  Sleep 2s

  

• Using Shell "bash" and Type "# ..." for conversational comments (source)

  Editor's note: when I tried this using zsh, it said # was an unknown function which is why I'm making a note of setting the shell to bash

  Set Shell "bash"
  Set FontSize 16
  Set Width  960
  Set Height 600
  Set Padding 5
  
  Sleep 1s
  Type "# Welcome to rpn!" Enter
  Type "# A simple and useful CLI RPN calculator." Enter
  Type "# You can use rpn interactively (the default) or use rpn 'expr'" Enter
  Type "# To evaluate an expression directly." Enter

  

• Setting Height sufficiently large to show whole output (source)

  Set Shell "fish"
  Set FontSize 16
  Set Width 920
  Set Height 1000

  

• View various vhs themes at dennym/vhs-theme-preview

Apparently Type escaping works a little differently here