Recreating sci-fi terminals using VHS

I heard about VHS recently. It’s a tool for creating recordings of command-line tools, so you can create little demos and tutorials about how to use them.

You can write a script to run commands, manipulate and theme the terminal and produce output in a range of formats.

I started thinking about how I could enhance some of the technical documentation I’ve been writing recently with little videos. It’d be a nice way to provide an alternative way for people to learn a process or a new tool.

But then I realised I could use it to do something much more fun: recreate some scenes from some sci-fi films.

So I give you sci-fi terminals. A little github repo with some VHS tapes that produce the following output.