Skip to content

User Guide

Jump to bottom
harish2222 edited this page Jun 19, 2026 · 3 revisions

🐄 User Guide

Welcome to Forgum, the cross-platform terminal experience for PowerShell. This guide provides an overview of how to use and customize your Forgum installation to enhance your terminal environment.

🌟 Core Concepts

Forgum integrates three classic terminal utilities into a cohesive, highly-performant module:

  1. ASCII Art Engine: A modern implementation of cowsay with 107 characters.
  2. Fortune Database: A curated collection of quotes, wisdom, and humorous observations.
  3. Lolcat Rendering: 24-bit truecolor rainbow colorization for any terminal output.
  4. Animation Engine: High-framerate terminal animations including bounce, dissolve, and fade effects.

🚀 Quick Start

Once installed, the primary way to interact with Forgum is through the forgum command.

# Display a random fortune with a random character in rainbow colors
forgum -Lolcat

# Open the interactive configuration menu
forgum config

🎨 Primary Commands

1. Generating ASCII Art

Use forgum directly for message generation with specific characters.

# Display a custom message using the 'dragon' character
forgum "System systems operational." -Cow dragon

# Use the 'kitty' character
forgum "Observation recorded." -Cow kitty

2. Configuration Management

The forgum config command is the recommended way to persistently update your preferences visually. For quick toggles from the terminal:

# Change the default character animation mode
forgum animate bounce

# Set custom eyes globally
forgum eyes "@@"

# Toggle global rainbow colorization
forgum toggle

3. Character Gallery

Explore the full library of 107 characters:

# View a random sample of characters
forgum gallery -Count 3

# Preview a specific character
forgum preview ghost "Boo!"

🛠 Advanced Customization

Character Moods

Modify the visual state of your character using eye presets:

# Stoned mood
forgum "Processing..." -Eyes **

# Dead mood
forgum "Critical Error." -Eyes xx

# Paranoia mood
forgum "Unauthorized access detected." -Eyes @@

Rainbow Colorization (Lolcat)

Toggle global colorization or adjust the frequency:

# Toggle global lolcat state
forgum toggle

# Adjust color frequency via configuration
Set-Forgum -RainbowFrequency 0.05

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

"How do I see all available characters?" Execute Get-CFCow to retrieve the complete inventory of character templates.

"How do I enable startup greetings?" Startup behavior is managed during initial installation or via forgumSetup. To enable it manually, ensure Import-Module Forgum is present in your $PROFILE.

"Is this compatible with non-PowerShell environments?" Yes. Forgum provides integration samples for Bash, Zsh, Fish, and tmux. Refer to the Sample Configs documentation for details.

❤️ Conclusion

Forgum is designed to be a lightweight, secure, and performant addition to your terminal workflow. For detailed technical specifications, refer to the API Reference.

Clone this wiki locally