# hpjansson/chafa

📺🗿 Terminal graphics for the 21st century.

Repository: https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/chafa
Homepage: https://hpjansson.org/chafa/
Language: C
License: LGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: ansi, terminal-graphics, terminal-based, image-processing, images, image-viewer, terminal, graphics, graphics-library, cli, sixel, kitty, iterm2, powershell
Last push: 2026-08-21T08:36:10+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 88/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 98, release rhythm 69, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3053, "days_push": 12, "days_rel": 126, "gap_med": 67.0, "n_releases_24m": 9}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5176, forks 117 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:11.706051+00:00)

## What it is
Chafa is a command-line utility and C library that converts images, including animated GIFs, into terminal graphics formats (Sixel, Kitty, iTerm2) or ANSI/Unicode character art. It works across a wide range of terminals from historical teleprinters to modern emulators, with SIMD-optimized, multithreaded rendering.

## Use cases
- view images in the terminal
- convert images to ascii art
- display animated gifs in a terminal emulator
- render sixel graphics from the command line
- preview images over ssh in a terminal
- generate unicode character art from pictures
- embed image rendering in a terminal application via C API

## When to choose
- you need to view or convert images directly in a terminal, including over SSH
- you need broad terminal compatibility, from legacy to modern graphics protocols
- you want a stable, documented C API for terminal image rendering
- you need fast, high-quality output with truecolor, transparency, and animation support

## When to avoid
- you need a full graphical image viewer with zoom and editing
- you work exclusively in GUI environments with no terminal workflow
- you need pixel-perfect image display rather than an approximation

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: image-processing, graphics, cli, gui
- domain: graphics, developer-tools, media
- platform: windows, cross-platform, cli, cpp
- tags: terminal-graphics, ansi-art, sixel, kitty-graphics-protocol, iterm2, unicode-art, image-viewer, c-library, animated-gif, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- hpjansson/chafa (main) score 88

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:11.706051+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 2026-08-29T18:01:49.655047+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/hpjansson/chafa (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:11.706051+00:00, sha 442a8e21e6c8)
  - homepage: https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:55:47.293803+00:00, sha 157462e1d76c)
  - site_page: https://hpjansson.org/chafa/ref (fetched 2026-08-29T08:55:47.296402+00:00, sha 6cd07e8f776e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.