# asciinema

Terminal session recorder, streamer and player 📹

Repository: https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/asciinema
Homepage: https://asciinema.org
Language: Rust
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: asciicast, terminal, recording, cli, asciinema, streaming, rustlang
Last push: 2026-08-14T09:03:57+00:00
Link (homepage): https://asciinema.org
Link (site_page): https://docs.asciinema.org/getting-started
Link (site_page): https://docs.asciinema.org/
Link (site_page): https://docs.asciinema.org/manual/server/embedding
Link (site_page): https://asciinema.org/a/10462

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 91/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 97, release rhythm 77, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5399, "days_push": 19, "days_rel": 78, "gap_med": 81, "n_releases_24m": 6}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 17738, forks 1040 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:20.238959+00:00)

## What it is
asciinema is a suite of open-source tools for recording, replaying, live-streaming, and sharing terminal sessions as lightweight text-based asciicast files instead of video. It includes a Rust CLI recorder/player, a web player for embedding recordings, a self-hostable server, and GIF conversion utilities.

## Use cases
- record terminal sessions for tutorials and demos
- share reproducible bug reports as text recordings
- embed terminal recordings in blog posts or project documentation
- live stream a terminal session to viewers in real time
- convert terminal recordings to animated GIFs
- replay recorded terminal sessions with adjustable speed
- self-host a terminal recording sharing platform

## When to choose
- you need lightweight, text-based terminal recordings instead of heavyweight video files
- you want copy-pasteable output from recorded sessions
- you need to embed interactive terminal demos in docs or READMEs
- you want to live stream terminal sessions over a network

## When to avoid
- you need to capture GUI applications or anything outside a terminal
- you need actual video output like mp4 with audio
- you need screen recording with mouse cursor and visual effects

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: cli, developer-tools, terminal-ui, video-processing, self-hosted
- domain: developer-tools, documentation, media, self-hosted
- platform: bsd, cli, self-hosted, rust
- tags: terminal-recording, asciicast, screen-recording, live-streaming, gif-generation, session-replay, embedding, command-line, linux, macos, web-server

## Member repositories
- asciinema/asciinema (main) score 91
- asciinema/asciinema-player (frontend) score 95
- asciinema/asciinema-server (backend) score 91
- asciinema/agg (plugin) score 94
- asciinema/asciicast2gif (plugin) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:20.238959+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:02:28.537306+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:20.238959+00:00, sha 5d898fa75802)
  - homepage: https://asciinema.org (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.647952+00:00, sha 9bca377eca98)
  - site_page: https://docs.asciinema.org/getting-started (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.658488+00:00, sha 1a97240ba03a)
  - site_page: https://docs.asciinema.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.661359+00:00, sha 14fd28c98ab6)
  - site_page: https://docs.asciinema.org/manual/server/embedding (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.663370+00:00, sha 522646c202fe)
  - site_page: https://asciinema.org/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.667121+00:00, sha 0d7976d476bb)
  - registry_crates: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates/asciinema (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.669073+00:00, sha c024dd7bc03d)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/asciinema-player (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.670681+00:00, sha 78f00a6cf2a2)
  - site_page: https://asciinema.org/a/10462 (fetched 2026-08-29T08:01:01.665392+00:00, sha e91bbc76fbe1)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.