VHS lets you record terminal sessions as code and transform them into polished animated GIFs, MP4s, or WebM videos. Perfect for developers, open-source maintainers, and educators who need to visually demonstrate command-line tools in action.

Define your terminal sessions using simple tape files—a straightforward scripting format that gives you complete control over every keystroke, pause, and command. Commands like Type, Enter, Sleep, and Wait let you choreograph exactly what happens on screen. Use the Output command to specify your desired format (GIF, MP4, or WEBM), and customize terminal appearance with font size, dimensions, and syntax highlighting.

Key capabilities include:

Programmatic terminal recording with tape file scripting
Multiple output formats: animated GIFs, MP4 videos, and WebM files
Environment variable configuration and command hiding for cleaner demos
Screenshot functionality to capture individual frames
SSH server built-in for remote access and execution
One-command publishing to vhs.charm.sh for easy sharing
Tape recording from live terminal sessions

Ideal for creating tutorial screencasts, adding animated demos to documentation, setting up continuous integration examples, and generating repeatable demonstrations for CLI applications. The tape file approach ensures your demos are reproducible, version-controllable, and easy to maintain.