Shoot and film the window headless

The window can be drawn offscreen, with no compositor and nothing on your desktop: one frame with --shot, or a whole clip with --clip. A program or an AI agent sees what the window shows this way, and every window clip in these pages was made by it.

One frame

manfred gui showcase/workshop.toml --shot workshop.png
manfred gui --start --shot start.png --size 1280x800

--size sets the window (1586x992 by default). The frame shows the settled window: the scene built, the stage drawn, every panel laid out.

Play a script first

--input <script> plays a script of one step a line before the frame. Coordinates are points from the window’s top left, and a line starting with # is a comment.

# pick the vase and look at its properties
click 995 480
frame
key g

Step	Does
key <name>	one key by egui’s name (g, Escape, Enter, ArrowDown); ctrl+, shift+, alt+ hold a modifier: key ctrl+z
text <words>	types the rest of the line
move x y	moves the pointer
click x y	presses and releases
press x y / release x y	holds the button down until the release, for a drag a frame can stop inside
drag x y x y [middle]	a whole drag in one line
scroll x y lines	the wheel, positive to come nearer
frame	draws one pass

manfred gui showcase/workshop.toml --input pick.txt --shot picked.png

Film a tape

A tape is a script with time: wait <seconds> holds still, the pointer glides to each point, a drag takes its time, text types at 15 characters a second.

wait 1
click 673 547
wait 0.6
press 720 556
move 690 551
move 660 546
release 630 541
wait 0.8
key ctrl+z
wait 1.5

manfred gui showcase/workshop.toml --clip clips --tape move.tape --poster last

It writes three files into clips/, each named <tape>-<W>x<H>-<fps>fps: an x264 .master.mp4, a .poster.png and a .json manifest (file formats). --fps is 30, 60 or 120. It needs ffmpeg on the PATH.

• It plays on a copy: the recipe’s folder is copied into the clip folder and played there, so the tape’s edits never reach your files, and the copy is removed at the end.
• It is deterministic: between frames it waits for every build, pick and render the window started, so the same tape gives the same master byte for byte.

To make a GIF of it, pconv converts the master:

pconv clips/move-1586x992-30fps.master.mp4 move.gif --size 1280 --fps 15