Skip to content

asciinema CLI

asciinema CLI (also known as asciinema "client" or "recorder") is a command-line tool for recording and live streaming terminal sessions.

Unlike typical screen recording software, which records visual output of a screen into a heavyweight video files (.mp4, .mov), asciinema CLI runs inside a terminal, capturing terminal session output into lightweight recording files in the asciicast format (.cast), or streaming it live to viewers in real-time.

Recordings can be replayed in a terminal, embedded on a web page with the asciinema player, or published to an asciinema server, such as asciinema.org, for further sharing. Live streams allow viewers to watch terminal sessions as they happen.

Recording a terminal with asciicast is just:

asciinema rec demo.cast

Similarly, live terminal streaming is as simple as:

asciinema stream -r

Check out the quick start guide for installation and usage overview.

Notable features:

  • recording and replaying of sessions inside a terminal,
  • local and remote live streaming of terminal sessions to multiple viewers in real-time,
  • lightweight recording format, which is highly compressible (down to 15% of the original size e.g. with zstd or gzip),
  • integration with asciinema server, e.g. asciinema.org, for easy recording hosting and live streaming.

asciinema CLI is free and open-source software (FOSS). Source code and license available at github.com/asciinema/asciinema.