ccowsay 2.1.1

A tool for generating customizable ASCII art messages with speech bubbles and cow-style templates, supporting styled text using AnsiMarkup.

ccowsay

🐮 A tool for generating customizable ASCII art messages with speech bubbles and cow-style templates, supporting styled text using AnsiMarkup.

Features

• Custom .ccow templates define ASCII art structure.
• Styled text formatting (colors, bold, italic, underline) via AnsiMarkup.
• Text alignment (left, center, right), word wrapping, and whitespace replacement.
• Dynamic template variables (eyes, tongue, etc.) that can be overridden.
• Simple configuration directory for templates and defaults.

Installation

pipx install ccowsay

Basic Usage

ccowsay "Hello World!"

For full details of supported tags and syntax see the AnsiMarkup documentation.

Command-Line Options

Option	Description	Default
-f, --format	Path or alias to a .ccow template	@/cow.ccow
-a, --align	Text alignment: left, center, right	left
-w, --wrap	Max width before wrapping (use -1 to disable wrapping)	40
--replace-whitespace	Replace tabs/newlines with spaces	False
-c, --corners	Four characters for bubble corners (TL, TR, BL, BR)	/ \ / \
-s, --sides	Four characters for bubble sides (top, bottom, left, right)	| - | -
-v, --values	JSON string of template variable overrides	{}
-l, --list	List available .ccow templates	—
--list-online	List online available .ccow templates	—
--get	Download a .ccow template from a GitHub repository and save it to the user config directory	—

Custom Templates

Templates live in your config directory (e.g., ~/.config/ccowsay/). Each .ccow file has two parts: JSON metadata, then ASCII art, separated by ---. Example:

{
  "eyes": "oo",
  "tongue": "  "
}
---
{message}
        {backslash}   ^__^
         {backslash}  ({eyes})\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
             {tongue} ||----w |
                ||     ||

Override variables with --values, for example:

ccowsay -f "@/cow.ccow" -v '{"eyes": "xx", "tongue": "U "}' "I'm tired..."

Coloring with XML-Style Tags

You can use XML-style tags from ansimarkup to add colors, bold, or italic text inside your .ccow templates.

[!WARNING] Do not use these tags directly in messages passed to ccowsay — they are intended for ASCII art templates only.

Example inside a .ccow file:

{
  "eyes": "oo",
  "tongue": "  "
}
---
<red>{message}</red>
        {backslash}   ^__^
         {backslash}  (<green>{eyes}</green>)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
             {tongue} ||----w |
                ||     ||

This ensures that all colors and styles are applied safely when rendering the ASCII art.

Using Templates from the Config Directory

Any .ccow file placed in your user config directory (usually ~/.config/ccowsay/) can be referenced using the @/ prefix.

For example:

ccowsay -f "@/cow.ccow" "Hello World!"

• @/cow refers to cow.ccow inside your config directory.
• This works for any custom template you add there.
• The default configuration also uses this syntax to load the built-in cow.

Downloading Templates

Use --get flag to download and store .ccow files locally:

ccowsay --get path/to/file.ccow

For more details, check out ccows.

Embedding in Python

from ccowsay import ccowsay, TextAlign

ascii_art = ccowsay(
    "<green>Hello from code!</green>",
    open("cow.ccow").read(),
    align=TextAlign.CENTER,
    width=40,
    eyes="oO",
    tongue="U "
)
print(ascii_art)

License

MIT License — free to use, modify, and distribute.