Also the pause button seems to take the GIF back to its first frame, then resume from where I paused... either that or I need a good sleep.

I would also argue it shouldn't be a gif. It's nice that it shows the command is fast I guess but it's one command that's still visible in the final frame. Not as bandwidth efficient and agreed I can't read it all in time

https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs is a really good utility for automatically making these gifs.

I'm a big fan of svg-term myself: https://github.com/marionebl/svg-term-cli

Hm, very interesting! This only converts asciinema recordings, though, right? It doesn't automatically record anything?

If you have asciinema already installed then you can invoke it through svg-term like this!

  svg-term --command 'cowsay hey there'

But that has the aforementioned issues about not pausing enough, so I usually just record with asciinema first and then invoke svg-term.

  > the gif that loops in the README should pause on the screen

Honestly, I think a screenshot is better than a gif. That last frame says everything you need.

You can make that problem irrelevant with the much, much simpler solution of not animating it at all. Stay paused on the output 100% of the time!

The gif is adding no value. I already know what typing text into a terminal looks like.

Thanks everyone for the feedback on the GIF! I though it looked good but when I went back to see it from a user's POV, it was really miserable, haha. I've already switched it to a static image, appreaciate everyone's input and suggestions.