milli

Pixel-perfect animated ASCII art. Images, GIFs, video frames — in your terminal, in the browser playground, or baked into Go / Lua / JSON for embedding in TUIs and Neovim dashboards.

No install. Drop an image or GIF into the web playground and grab the ASCII / .milli / Go / Lua / JSON output instantly. Same engine as the CLI, all browser-side.

Install

npm install -g @amansingh-afk/milli

Or one-shot without install:

npx @amansingh-afk/milli image pic.png

Requires Node 18+ and a terminal with truecolor (COLORTERM=truecolor). Most modern terminals qualify.

Quick start

# zero-friction: bundled samples ship with the npm package
milli play fire
milli fastfetch jellyfish        # animated logo + fastfetch info, single command

# render any image to ASCII
milli image pic.png

# animated GIF in the terminal
milli play anim.gif

# bake a GIF into a fast-loading .milli file (no sharp at playback time)
milli convert anim.gif anim.milli
milli play anim.milli

# export frames as Lua for Neovim dashboards (use with milli.nvim)
milli export anim.gif ./out -t lua -w 60 --no-bg

# export frames as Go for Bubbletea splashes
milli export anim.gif ./out -t go -p bootsplash -w 50

milli fastfetch jellyfish — bundled animation in fastfetch's logo column, info on the right:

Documentation

| Doc | What's in it | | ---------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | CLI reference | All commands (image / play / convert / export), flags, render modes, export targets | | Recipes | Neovim splash, terminal screensaver, shell MOTD, tmux pane, React embed, Bubbletea, animated fastfetch | | Library API | Programmatic API, .milli format spec, supported input formats | | FAQ | Performance, aspect ratio, transparency, browser usage, common gotchas |

How it compares to chafa

chafa is the quality floor for "image → terminal." milli adds:

• Pre-baked format — .milli for instant playback, ship with your app
• Source export — Go / Lua / JSON for embedding (chafa is a binary)
• Programmatic API — use as a Node library
• Browser bundle — decode + render .milli in React, no Node deps
• Neovim integration — first-party dashboard plugin
• Truecolor glyph matching — match mode uses per-glyph MSE, not just dominant color per cell

If you want a one-shot terminal render and chafa is installed — chafa is great. If you want to embed ASCII animation in your product (TUI splash, nvim dashboard, animated fastfetch, dashboard widget), milli is built for that.

Non-goals

• Not a terminal image protocol. Sixel, kitty, iTerm2 inline images draw pixels. milli draws glyphs.
• Not a TUI framework. Use ink / blessed / bubbletea / ratatui. milli is a widget.
• No streaming / webcam. Offline clips only.

License

MIT.