🦀 TARTS: Terminal Arts 🎨

BLAZINGLY FAST terminal screensavers written in Rust!

tarts (shortcut from Terminal Arts) is a collection of MEMORY SAFE terminal-based screen savers that bring visual delight to your command line. Built with ZERO-COST ABSTRACTIONS, these screen savers run efficiently while providing stunning visual effects.

✨ Features

• 🌧️ Matrix Rain: Experience the famous "Matrix" digital rain effect right in your terminal
• 🧫 Conway's Game of Life: Watch the classic cellular automaton evolve before your eyes
• 🧩 Maze Generation: Get lost in procedurally generated mazes
• 🐦 Boids: Witness the emergent flocking behavior of these simulated birds
• 🧊 3D Cube: Renders a rotating 3D cube using terminal graphics with braille patterns for higher resolution
• 🦀 Crab: Animated crabs walking across your screen, interacting with each other and the environment
• 🍩 Rotating Donut: A mesmerizing rotating donut rendered in the terminal
• 🚰 Pipes: Watch pipes flow with a smooth animation
• 🔥 Fire: A cozy fireplace effect to warm up your terminal
• ⚡ Plasma: Electric plasma effect with vibrant colors and smooth animations
• ✨ Constellation: Drifting stars that connect with dotted lines and twinkle
• 🗺️ Pocketworld: A living world map — drifting plates, rivers and lakes, weather, seasons, forests and wildfire simulated in real time
• 🎯 Blank: Simple blank screen with minimal resource usage

🚀 Installation

Homebrew (macOS & Linux)

brew tap oiwn/tap && brew install tarts

Cargo (Cross-platform)

cargo install tarts

Nix

Direct from GitHub (always latest version):

nix run github:oiwn/tarts -- matrix

Or from the nixpkgs (may be older version):

nix-shell -p tarts --run "tarts matrix"

Manual Download

Download the latest binary from GitHub Releases

🛠️ Usage

Run any effect by name:

tarts matrix   # The classic digital rain effect
tarts life     # Conway's Game of Life
tarts maze     # Watch a maze generate itself
tarts boids    # Bird-like flocking simulation
tarts cube     # 3D rotating cube using braille patterns
tarts crab     # Animated crabs with collisions
tarts donut    # Rotating donut
tarts pipes    # Pipes effect
tarts fire     # Fire effect
tarts plasma   # Electric plasma effect
tarts constellation  # Drifting stars and dotted constellations
tarts butterfly # Fluttering butterflies floating around
tarts pocketworld # Living pocket world: rivers, rain, erosion, seasons, plates
tarts blank    # Simple blank screen

Controls: Press q, Esc, or Ctrl+C to exit

Quick Test: Try the most popular effect first!

tarts matrix

🧪 Development

This project uses standard Rust tooling:

# Build the project
cargo build --release

# Run tests
cargo test

# Benchmark performance
cargo bench

# Analyze what an effect renders — headless glyph census + change rate (dev)
tarts --analyze pocketworld --view height --frames 3000

🤝 Contributing

Bug fixes and improvements are welcome! Please feel free to submit pull requests and report bugs.

New effects are not accepted without prior discussion. Open an issue first so we can align on scope and design before any code is written.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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_{Built with ❤️ and FEARLESS CONCURRENCY}