VHS Terminal Recorder

VHS Terminal Recorder

When to use

Use this skill only when vhs or Charmbracelet VHS is actually the right surface:

• user says vhs, Charmbracelet VHS, .tape, terminal GIF, terminal recording, command-line screencast, or scripted terminal demo
• docs need a reproducible recording of CLI behavior
• an existing VHS tape needs authoring, validation, rendering, or debugging

Do not use it for arbitrary desktop capture, browser product tours, video editing, or one-off interactive work that cannot be made deterministic. Use a video/screen-capture workflow instead when the subject is not a terminal.

Mental model

VHS runs a tape file in a pseudo-terminal and renders the terminal session to GIF, MP4, or WebM. Treat a tape like a small executable test:

• the tape must create or point at deterministic state
• commands shown to viewers should be short and intentional
• setup belongs behind Hide / Show
• vhs validate checks tape syntax but does not prove the commands work
• vhs <file> executes the tape and can mutate files, hit the network, or run project commands

This skill is not the VHS language reference. For exact syntax, generate or inspect live docs:

vhs --help
vhs manual
vhs new /tmp/example.tape
vhs validate /tmp/example.tape

Setup and verification

VHS is the Charmbracelet CLI from https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs. Before depending on it, verify the local binary and help:

vhs --version
vhs --help