Write a tape

A tape is the keystrokes of one shot, one step a line. It holds only steps: the size, theme, font and the rest live in render/terminal.toml, so the same tape renders at any size or theme. This is the sample app’s typing.tape:

Sleep 300ms
Type "demo tick"
Enter
Sleep 1.6s
Type "demo show"
Enter
Sleep 1.2s

Steps

step	what it does
Type "…"	types the text, one character every typing (default 40 ms); quote it with ", ' or `
Enter, Backspace, Delete, Tab, Shift+Tab, Escape, Space	one key
Up, Down, Left, Right, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown	one key
Ctrl+<key>, Alt+<key>, Ctrl+Alt+<key>	a chord, such as Ctrl+C or Alt+Enter
Sleep <duration>	waits
Wait /regex/	waits until the screen’s last non-blank row matches
Wait+Screen /regex/	waits until anywhere on the screen matches
Hide, Show	cut the steps between them from the recording
Screenshot	keeps a marker in the cast
# …	a comment

A duration is 500ms, 1.5s, 2m, or a bare number of seconds.

Speed and repeats

Type and key steps take @<duration>, the delay after each character or key: Type@0ms "…" types the text at once, Down@200ms waits 200 ms after the key. On Wait it is the timeout. A key step takes a repeat count: Down@200ms 3 presses Down three times.

Type@0ms "myapp tui"
Enter
Wait /ready/
Down@200ms 3
Enter
Ctrl+C

Wait for the screen, not the clock

A Sleep guesses how long the app takes; a Wait watches the screen. Wait /ready/ returns as soon as the last non-blank row matches the regex, and Wait+Screen@5s /Loaded \d+ items/ searches the whole screen for up to 5 seconds. The default timeout is 15 seconds; on a timeout the recording stops with the rows it saw, so a tape that waits for the wrong text says what was there.

Hide setup steps

Hide and Show cut a stretch from the replay: the app still runs it, but its frames never show. For a command that only prepares the app, the shot’s launch is simpler: prec types it hidden, waits settle, then starts showing.

Stills

A still is taken 150 ms after its tape’s last step, so end the tape on the screen you want, with a Wait or a Sleep that lets the app finish drawing.

What a tape can’t hold

VHS’s settings commands are refused, so a tape never fights the recipe: Output, Set, Require, Env and Source each stop the run with a tape holds steps only; the settings come from terminal.toml. Copy and Paste are refused too: the clipboard has no replay, so type the text.