Recording once, restyling forever

Rebuilding a tape re-runs your command, which takes as long as the command takes and depends on the machine still being in the same state. If all you want to change is how the recording looks, save the capture instead:

ttysvg record --out demo.svg --save demo.json -- cargo build

demo.json holds the terminal frames and their timing, not the SVG. Every style and timing choice can then be replayed against it with no terminal involved:

ttysvg render demo.json --theme gruvbox
ttysvg render demo.json --speed 2 --window --title "cargo build"
ttysvg render demo.json --info

This is the difference between a two second loop and a two minute one. Rendering reads the saved frames straight from disk, so it finishes in milliseconds however long the original command took.

Re-rendering with no flags reproduces the original SVG byte for byte, because the recording stored the settings it was made with.

Every command can save one

ttysvg record --save session.json -- ./my-tool
ttysvg build demo.tape --save demo.json

--save on its own skips the SVG entirely.

One take, many outputs

ttysvg record --save session.json --out docs/demo.svg -- mytool --help

ttysvg render session.json --theme tokyonight --out docs/tokyonight.svg
ttysvg render session.json --theme catppuccin --out docs/catppuccin.svg
ttysvg render session.json --theme gruvbox    --out docs/gruvbox.svg
ttysvg render session.json --theme nord       --out docs/nord.svg

Nothing was executed again. The same trick gives a wide social preview and a compact inline banner from one take:

ttysvg render session.json --font-size 18 --padding 32 --out docs/social.svg
ttysvg render session.json --font-size 12 --padding 12 --no-loop --out docs/inline.svg

What cannot change

Everything except --cols and --rows. Those two are fixed at record time, because a capture stores the terminal grid after wrapping rather than the bytes that produced it. Reflowing to a new width would need the recording to be made again.