asciinema

asciinema is a terminal session recorder that captures command-line activity into lightweight .cast files using the asciicast format, rather than generating heavy video files like traditional screen recorders. It runs inside terminals on GNU/Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD, recording both input and output for later replay.

The tool supports local and remote live streaming of terminal sessions to multiple viewers in real-time through a built-in HTTP server or relay servers. Recording files are highly compressible (down to 15% of original size with zstd or gzip) and can be replayed directly in terminals, embedded in web pages with the asciinema player, or published to asciinema servers like asciinema.org for sharing.

Basic usage involves asciinema rec demo.cast to record sessions, asciinema stream -l for local streaming via HTTP server, and asciinema stream -r for streaming through relay servers. The tool is written in Rust and targets developers, educators, and technical writers who need to document, demonstrate, or share terminal workflows without the overhead of video recording.

Installation

# via Cargo
cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema