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 -- game_of_life_bloom --cell-style dotted
nix run github:Yazelix/anima#yzs -- random --duration-seconds 3

What It Contains

• Animation engines for Boids, Mandelbrot, 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

User Command

Installed standalone command:

yzs --help
yzs
yzs static
yzs asciiquarium --duration-seconds 3
yzs mandelbrot
yzs game_of_life_bloom --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 -- mandelbrot
cargo run --bin yzs -- game_of_life_bloom --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 -- mandelbrot
nix run .#yzs -- random --duration-seconds 3

Supported styles:

• static
• logo
• asciiquarium
• boids
• boids_predator
• boids_schools
• mandelbrot
• game_of_life_gliders
• game_of_life_oscillators
• game_of_life_bloom
• random

No style means random

Random chooses from the animated styles, excluding static and logo; use those styles explicitly for the card-like welcome screens

The aquarium runs as a separate asciiquarium-rs process under its GPL-2.0-or-later license. 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 -- boids_schools 120
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