Cowser

A fun, cross-platform command-line tool that greets you with ASCII art animals. Inspired by cowsay, written in Python.

Features

• 35+ animals across categories: cows, cats, dogs, birds, sea life, robots, mythical creatures and more
• Greet users with a random animal, or pick one by name/index/prefix
• Custom messages and piping from stdin
• Configurable eyes (--eyes) on token-based art
• Colored output (ANSI, works on modern Windows terminals)
• Config file at ~/.config/neostore/cowser/config.toml
• Usable as a library in your own Python code

Installation

Requires Python 3.8+.

pip install cowser

For color support on legacy Windows consoles (cmd.exe pre-Windows 10):

pip install cowser[color]

From source:

git clone https://github.com/rkriad585/Cowser
cd Cowser
pip install .

Usage

cowser Alice                 # greet with a random animal
cowser --cow owl Bob         # pick a specific animal
cowser --message "Hello!"    # custom message
echo "From stdin" | cowser   # pipe a message
cowser --list                # show all animals
cowser --search mythical     # search by name, category, or tag

 _________
/ Hi Bob! \
\__________/
   _____
  / o o \
 (   V   )
  \_____/

Options

Legacy commands

Backwards-compatible with the original script:

python main.py Alice
python main.py help
python main.py list
./cowset Alice

Configuration

Defaults are read from ~/.config/neostore/cowser/config.toml. Command-line flags always win. See config.example.toml.

# ~/.config/neostore/cowser/config.toml
color = "green"
cow = "fish"
eyes = "o o"
# seed = 42

Using Cowser as a library

from cowser import COWS, render, register_cow, search_cows, Cow

print(render("Hello from my app", cow="owl", eyes="0.0"))

for cow in search_cows(category="mythical"):
    print(cow.name, cow.tags)

register_cow(Cow("my-dragon", "   ~\n  (o.o)", category="mythical"))

render() is a pure function — no I/O, no side effects — so it is safe to embed in other tools.

Adding more animals

Open cowser/cows.py and add a Cow to the COWS list. Art may include an {eyes} token that --eyes replaces:

Cow("my-cow", r"""   /\
  /  \
 | oo |
 ~~   ~~""", "misc", ("new",)),

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
python -m pytest

Tests run on Linux, macOS, and Windows via GitHub Actions.

License

MIT © 2026 rkriad585