What is cli-demo-generator?

A tool for creating animated terminal demonstrations as GIFs from VHS terminal recordings, including command setup, recording, filtering, speed changes, and frame checks.

Use it to record installation, build, or other command-line workflows as GIF demos, including demos that need automatic setup or playback-speed changes.

It turns command-line workflows into repeatable demos and handles setup and terminal-output cleanup. It also documents workarounds for VHS syntax limits with special characters.

cli-demo-generator — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by daymade: A tool for creating animated terminal demonstrations as GIFs…

About the project

Claude Code Skills Marketplace is a collection and marketplace of skills, plugins, agents, and instructions that extend Claude Code with specialized development workflows. It is for developers who want to install existing workflows or create, validate, and package their own Claude Code skills.

daymade/claude-code-skills · 1,377 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/daymade/claude-code-skills/cli-demo-generator

Any agent

npx skills add daymade/claude-code-skills --skill cli-demo-generator

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/daymade/claude-code-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin cli-demo-generator — /plugin install cli-demo-generator after adding the marketplace above.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daymade/claude-code-skills/cli-demo-generator.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/daymade/claude-code-skills/cli-demo-generator)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/daymade/claude-code-skills/cli-demo-generator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/daymade/claude-code-skills/cli-demo-generator.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 114 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,919 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00114	$0.01919
Opus 5	$0.00057	$0.00959
Sonnet 5	$0.00023	$0.00384
Haiku 4.5	$0.00011	$0.00192

Measured today against content hash 39e70dd6d4ee, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cli-demo-generator scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured today.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/auto_generate_demo.py, scripts/batch_generate.py, scripts/record_interactive.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

cli-demo-generator/SKILL.md · 241 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 241 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI Demo Generator

Create professional animated CLI demos. Four approaches, from fully automated to pixel-precise manual control.

Quick Start

Simplest path — give commands, get GIF:

python3 ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/auto_generate_demo.py \
  -c "npm install my-package" \
  -c "npm run build" \
  -o demo.gif

Self-bootstrapping demo — for repeatable recordings that clean their own state:

python3 ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/auto_generate_demo.py \
  -c "npm install my-package" \
  -c "npm run build" \
  -o demo.gif \
  --bootstrap "npm uninstall my-package 2>/dev/null" \
  --speed 2

Critical: VHS Parser Limitations

VHS Type strings cannot contain $, \", or backticks. These cause parse errors:

# FAILS — VHS parser rejects special chars
Type "echo \"hello $USER\""
Type "claude() { command claude \"$@\"; }"

Workaround: base64 encode the command, decode at runtime:

# 1. Encode your complex command
echo 'claude() { command claude "$@" 2>&1 | grep -v "noise"; }' | base64
# Output: Y2xhdWRlKCkgey4uLn0K

# 2. Use in tape
Type "echo Y2xhdWRlKCkgey4uLn0K | base64 -d > /tmp/wrapper.sh && source /tmp/wrapper.sh"

This pattern is essential for output filtering, function definitions, and any command with shell special characters.

Approaches

1. Automated Generation (Recommended)

python3 ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/auto_generate_demo.py \
  -c "command1" -c "command2" \
  -o output.gif \
  --title "My Demo" \
  --theme "Catppuccin Latte" \
  --font-size 24 \
  --width 1400 --height 600

Flag	Default	Description
`-c`	required	Command to include (repeatable)
`-o`	required	Output GIF path
`--title`	none	Title shown at start
`--theme`	Dracula	VHS theme name
`--font-size`	16	Font size in pt
`--width`	1400	Terminal width px
`--height`	700	Terminal height px
`--bootstrap`	none	Hidden setup command (repeatable)
`--filter`	none	Regex pattern to filter from output
`--speed`	1	Playback speed multiplier (uses gifsicle)
`--no-execute`	false	Generate .tape only

Read the full file on GitHub · 241 lines

Files

What ships with it

11 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

today Changed · +7 lines 39e70dd6d4ee
5d ago First seen · 234 lines · 114 tokens per session scan A b699d8ecc698

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-demo-generator is a skill published in the GitHub repository daymade/claude-code-skills (1,377 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 114 tokens to every session and 1,919 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Creative and media Debugging

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

local-ai-agents

Build local-first AI agents that run entirely on a developer workstation with Microsoft Foundry Local and Qwen function-calling models. Covers Small Language Models (SLMs), the OpenAI-compatible local endpoint, sandboxed local tools, local RAG with Chroma, local MCP servers, hybrid cloud/local routing, and the…

microsoft/ai-agents-for-beginners · 200 tokens

next-cache-components-adoption

Turn on Cache Components in a Next.js app and resolve the blocking routes it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable, adopt, or migrate to Cache Components, flip the cacheComponents flag, work through a flood of blocking-prerender / instant validation errors, run the cache-components-instant-false codemod, or…

vercel/next.js · 95 tokens

next-cache-components-optimizer

Drive a Next.js route to instant navigation by setting up an agentic loop, under Cache Components / PPR, on initial load (hard navigation) and client-side navigation (soft navigation). Encode the goal as a failing @next/playwright instant() e2e and work it to green, one verified route at a time; the shipped test then…

vercel/next.js · 170 tokens

next-partial-prefetching-adoption

Turn on Partial Prefetching in a Next.js app and work through the insights it surfaces. Use when the user wants to enable or adopt Partial Prefetching, flip the partialPrefetching flag, opt routes in with export const prefetch = 'partial', audit Link prefetch={true} behavior, preserve existing prefetched UI with…

vercel/next.js · 103 tokens

chronicle

Analyze Copilot session history for standup reports, usage tips, session search, and session reindexing. Use when the user asks for a standup, daily summary, usage tips, workflow recommendations, wants to search or find past sessions by keyword/file/PR, wants to reindex their session store, or asks about deleting…

microsoft/vscode · 72 tokens