Anima

Anima is a standalone terminal animation toolkit from Yazelix. It works in any capable terminal; no Yazelix installation is required.

The user-facing command is yzs

nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- static
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- asciiquarium --duration-seconds 3
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- mandelbrot
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- friends_and_enemies
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- primordial
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- game_of_life_tumblers --cell-style dotted
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- random --duration-seconds 3

What It Contains

• Animation engines for Boids, friends and enemies, Primordial Particle Systems, Mandelbrot, Matrix rain, and Game of Life
• The separately packaged asciiquarium-rs terminal aquarium
• Static and logo-style Yazelix welcome screens
• File-backed Kitty PNG frame sequence rendering
• Frame production through ScreenFrameProducer
• Terminal sizing helpers and alternate-screen rendering helpers
• A standalone yzs binary with interactive and timed playback
• Small examples for library consumers

Special Thanks

Special thanks to:

• Craig Reynolds, who created Boids in 1986. Its separation, alignment, and cohesion rules inspire Anima's Boids animations.
• John Horton Conway, who invented the Game of Life in 1970. His cellular automaton inspires Anima's Game of Life animations.
• Simon Woods, who published the friends-and-enemies particle dance. Its update rule inspires Anima's dense particle animation.
• Benoît Mandelbrot, whose pioneering fractal work led to the Mandelbrot set. It inspires Anima's Mandelbrot animation.
• Simon Whiteley, who designed the digital rain for The Matrix. It inspires Anima's Matrix animation.
• Thomas Schmickl, Martin Stefanec, and Karl Crailsheim, who introduced the Primordial Particle System motion law. It inspires Anima's Primordial animation.

User Command

Installed standalone command:

yzs --help
yzs
yzs static
yzs asciiquarium --duration-seconds 3
yzs friends_and_enemies --duration-seconds 3
yzs primordial --duration-seconds 3
yzs mandelbrot
yzs game_of_life_tumblers --cell-style dotted
yzs random --duration-seconds 3

Yazelix users get the integrated screen surface through the main command:

yzx screen
yzx screen mandelbrot

Repository Usage

From this repository:

cargo run --bin yzs -- --help
cargo run --bin yzs -- static
cargo run --bin yzs -- asciiquarium --duration-seconds 3
cargo run --bin yzs -- friends_and_enemies --duration-seconds 3
cargo run --bin yzs -- primordial --duration-seconds 3
cargo run --bin yzs -- mandelbrot
cargo run --bin yzs -- game_of_life_tumblers --cell-style dotted
cargo run --bin yzs -- random --duration-seconds 3

Source-only Cargo runs resolve asciiquarium-rs from PATH; Nix runs use the pinned upstream executable

With Nix:

nix build .#yzs
nix run .#yzs -- --help
nix run .#yzs -- static
nix run .#yzs -- asciiquarium --duration-seconds 3
nix run .#yzs -- friends_and_enemies --duration-seconds 3
nix run .#yzs -- primordial --duration-seconds 3
nix run .#yzs -- mandelbrot
nix run .#yzs -- random --duration-seconds 3

Supported styles:

• static
• logo
• asciiquarium
• boids
• boids_predator
• boids_schools
• friends_and_enemies
• primordial
• mandelbrot
• matrix
• game_of_life_gliders
• game_of_life_tumblers
• random

No style means random

In native animations, Left/h/p selects the previous style and Right/l/n selects the next; any other key exits

Random chooses from the dogfooded animated styles. static, logo, and friends_and_enemies remain explicitly selectable but outside that pool

The aquarium runs as a separate asciiquarium-rs process under its GPL-2.0-or-later license. Its upstream credit and lineage section traces it to Kirk Baucom's original Perl program, Joan Stark's ASCII art, Claudio Matsuoka's additions, and cablehead's Rust port. yzs supplies the same any-key exit and optional duration contract used by its native styles without copying or linking the aquarium implementation. The packaged upstream revision exits cleanly when its terminal disappears, so closing the containing terminal cannot orphan it

Library Examples

Render one frame without alternate-screen mode:

cargo run --example render_once

Play a style for a bounded number of frames:

cargo run --example play_style -- mandelbrot 90
cargo run --example play_style -- matrix 90
cargo run --example play_style -- boids_schools 120
cargo run --example play_style -- friends_and_enemies 90
cargo run --example play_style -- primordial 180
cargo run --example play_style -- game_of_life_gliders 80

The second argument is the frame count. The examples use only yazelix_screen APIs and standard Rust APIs

Boundary With Yazelix

yazelix_screen owns reusable animation and terminal-rendering primitives, including standalone Yazelix-branded screen styles. Integrated welcome/session policy stays outside the crate

The crate must not depend on:

• yazelix_core
• settings.jsonc
• generated Yazelix config or state
• Zellij session state
• Home Manager install state
• Yazelix command palette or workspace orchestration

Yazelix consumes this crate for integrated rendering. yzx screen is the integrated Yazelix command; yzs is the standalone command for terminal users who want only the screen animations

Surfaces

• Product/repository: anima
• Command: yzs
• Rust crate: yazelix_screen
• Integrated Yazelix command: yzx screen

Release Policy

External releases use SemVer. Breaking changes to frame producer traits, style names, terminal-mode helpers, or cell-style parsing require a major version bump

Component tags should use:

v0.1.0

Verification

From this repository:

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo check --examples
cargo test
cargo run --bin yzs -- --help
cargo run --example render_once
nix build .#yzs
nix run .#yzs -- --help