Crazy dark pattern for a command line utility.

If you miss filename, recording goes to some server.

Yep, recording and upload should really be two separate commands by default.

Thanks. This behavior dates back to 2011, and while there 2 separate commands you can use today (asciinema rec <filename> + asciinema upload <filename>) the demo on the homepage and the docs may be giving wrong impression. This will be definitely improved in the upcoming 3.0.

When recording finishes you are given the option to upload or save to local file.

There’s no bad intention here, and there’s upload confirmation prompt in versions prior to 2.4, while in 2.4+ you make explicit choice (save, upload, discard). In upcoming 3.0 we will probably decouple upload from record command completely.

This should be prominently mentioned on the “How it works” page [0], or even better, also on the main page, because it isn’t clear at all that local recording or upload to a custom server is supported. If not for the above comment, I would have dismissed the tool as unsuitable after browsing the site a bit.

[0] https://asciinema.org/docs/how-it-works

Thanks for mentioning this. This aspect of the docs does disservice to how people perceive the tool, and it’s something I’m going to fix right away.