vcr 0.1.1

VcrSharp

⚠️ WORK IN PROGRESS This project is in early development and the API will change rapidly. If you need a stable, production-ready terminal recorder, please use VHS instead. VcrSharp is experimental and should be considered alpha quality.

A .NET terminal recorder that turns .tape scripts into GIFs, videos, and SVGs. Write your terminal demos as code, then render them to GIF, MP4, WebM, PNG, or (animated/static) SVG.

VCR# is browserless. It drives a real shell over an in-process pseudo-terminal (ConPTY on Windows, a Unix PTY on Linux/macOS) and renders the output with its own VT500 terminal engine — no ttyd, no Chromium, no Playwright. SVG and PNG output need no external binaries at all.

Installation

VCR# ships as a .NET global tool:

dotnet tool install --global vcr

Need the old behavior? VCR# was rewritten substantially after 0.0.35. If you depend on the pre-rewrite behavior and aren't ready to migrate, pin that version:

dotnet tool install --global vcr --version 0.0.35

That's the whole install for SVG and PNG output. If you want to encode GIF, MP4, or WebM, also put FFmpeg on your PATH:

Requirements: .NET 10. FFmpeg is required only for GIF/MP4/WebM. Raster output (GIF/MP4/WebM/PNG) also uses a monospace font installed on your system — usually already present (Consolas/Cascadia on Windows, DejaVu Sans Mono on Linux); SVG output needs none.

Verify it runs (vcr themes lists the built-in themes):

vcr themes

The full walkthrough lives in the Getting Started tutorial.

Quick Example

Create a file called demo.tape:

Output demo.svg

Set Cols 80
Set Rows 20
Set Theme "Dracula"

Type "echo 'Hello, VCR#!'"
Enter
Sleep 1s

Then record it (SVG output needs no extra tools):

vcr demo.tape

Change Output demo.svg to demo.gif to render a GIF instead (requires FFmpeg).

CLI at a glance

Documentation

Full docs, tutorials, and reference: https://phil-scott-78.github.io/vcr/

• Getting Started Tutorial
• Tape Syntax Reference
• Configuration Options
• Sample tape files in samples/

Attribution

This project is heavily inspired by VHS by Charm Bracelet. VcrSharp adds first-class Windows support, a fully browserless rendering path (its own VT500 terminal engine, no ttyd or Chromium), the ability to execute real commands via the Exec command, and an interactive record mode that works across shells (VHS's is bash-only) — but VHS is still much more feature rich.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.