Skip to content

User Guide

Jump to bottom
harish2222 edited this page Jun 18, 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 Invoke-Forgum command.

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

🎨 Primary Commands

1. Generating ASCII Art

Use Invoke-Cowsay for direct message generation with specific characters.

# Display a custom message using the 'dragon' character
Invoke-Cowsay -Text "System systems operational." -CowFile dragon

# Use the 'kitty' character
Invoke-Cowsay -Text "Observation recorded." -CowFile kitty

2. Configuration Management

The Set-Forgum command is the recommended way to persistently update your preferences.

# Persistently set the default character and animation mode
Set-Forgum -Cow dragon -Animation bounce

# Enable global rainbow colorization and set custom eyes
Set-Forgum -Lolcat $true -Eyes "@@"

3. Character Gallery

Explore the full library of 107 characters:

# List all character names
Get-CFCow

# View a random sample of characters
cowgallery -Count 3

🛠 Advanced Customization

Character Moods

Modify the visual state of your character using eye presets:

# Stoned mood
Invoke-Cowsay -Text "Processing..." -Eyes **

# Dead mood
Invoke-Cowsay -Text "Critical Error." -Eyes xx

# Paranoia mood
Invoke-Cowsay -Text "Unauthorized access detected." -Eyes @@

Rainbow Colorization (Lolcat)

Toggle global colorization or adjust the frequency:

# Toggle global lolcat state
lolcat-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 Invoke-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