A small animated cat that lives in your terminal and keeps you company while you work.
She wanders, sits, washes her paws, yawns, scratches, and sleeps in different poses. Walks left, right, up, and down with proper four-direction animations. Ignores you when she runs full-screen TUIs like vim or htop. Cleans up after herself when shell output scrolls past her.
Three different cats ship with scamp (gray, ginger tabby, white) and one is picked at random every time you launch. You can pin one by setting the SCAMP_CAT env var (see Configure below).
scamp is built around sixel graphics for sharp pixel-art rendering. Sixel works in:
- Windows Terminal (recommended for Windows users; install free from the Microsoft Store, or
winget install Microsoft.WindowsTerminal) - WezTerm, iTerm2, foot, kitty, contour, recent xterm
In regular PowerShell windows, cmd.exe, and most IDE-integrated terminals (VS Code, Cursor, Antigravity), you get a half-block fallback that works but looks chunkier and less detailed. The cat is still a cat, just lower fidelity.
If you can, open Windows Terminal first, then launch scamp inside it. The visual difference is significant.
Download scamp.exe from the latest release, then run it inside Windows Terminal:
scamp.exe
cargo install --git https://github.com/LordAizen1/scamp-cat
scamp
Two environment variables.
SCAMP_CAT pins a specific cat color (default behavior is random per launch so each session feels a little different):
$env:SCAMP_CAT="gray" # the dark-gray cat
$env:SCAMP_CAT="ginger" # the orange tabby
$env:SCAMP_CAT="white" # the white cat
scamp
Unset to go back to the random pick on each launch.
SCAMP_RENDERER overrides the auto-detected renderer:
$env:SCAMP_RENDERER="sixel" # force pixel-perfect sixel
$env:SCAMP_RENDERER="halfblock" # force the half-block fallback
By default scamp picks sixel when it detects a sixel-capable terminal (Windows Terminal, WezTerm, iTerm2, foot, kitty, contour) and half-block everywhere else.
- PTY wrapper (
portable-pty) hosts your shell and forwards bytes both ways - ANSI parser (
vte) maintains a screen-cell model used to clean up after the sprite - Sixel encoder (
icy_sixel) for pixel-perfect rendering - Half-block character renderer for fallback compatibility
- Atomic compositor: single buffered write per redraw, scroll-aware ghost cleanup, alt-screen pause, terminal resize handling
| Terminal | Renderer | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Terminal | sixel | First-class, looks great |
| WezTerm, iTerm2, foot, kitty | sixel | Detected via env vars |
| ConHost (default cmd / PS) | half-block | Fallback, smaller and chunkier |
| VS Code / Cursor / similar | half-block | Sixel possible if you enable it |
To get the cat to look its best in your IDE terminal, enable terminal.integrated.enableImages in settings, then $env:SCAMP_RENDERER="sixel" before launching.
Cat sprites by Last tick (animated-pixel-kittens-cats-32x32 on itch.io). Used under the asset pack's license: free for personal and commercial use, redistribution as standalone art prohibited. The sprites are bundled into the scamp binary as part of a software product.
If you like the art, support the artist by visiting their itch.io page.
scamp's source code is MIT licensed. See LICENSE.
The bundled sprite assets are subject to Last tick's terms (see Credits above).