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Pace Terminal Output for Demos and Recordings

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Terminal demos and recordings are hard to follow when a command dumps hundreds of lines instantly. The output may be correct, but viewers cannot read it and recording tools capture a wall of text instead of a sequence.

The Problem​

Some Atmos commands produce rich, multi-line output that is useful in a real terminal but awkward in demos, docs, and recorded walkthroughs. When everything appears at once, important transitions are easy to miss.

That is especially noticeable with VHS recordings and scripted demos, where readable pacing matters as much as the final output.

The Change​

Atmos now supports settings.terminal.speed, also available as ATMOS_TERMINAL_SPEED, to pace terminal output by lines per second.

settings:
  terminal:
    speed: 18
ATMOS_TERMINAL_SPEED=18 atmos describe stacks

A value of 0 keeps the existing unlimited output behavior. That is the default, so normal interactive and CI usage does not change unless you opt in.

Why It Matters​

  • Better recordings. Output appears at a readable pace for demos, tutorials, and screengrabs.
  • No command rewrites. Keep the same Atmos command and control pacing through config or an environment variable.
  • Default behavior is unchanged. Unlimited output remains the default.

Get Involved​

See the terminal settings documentation for the full terminal configuration reference.