ufosay 1.0.0

A flying saucer terminal animation tool (like sl meets cowsay)

ufosay

A flying saucer terminal animation tool — like sl meets cowsay.

 ┌──────────────────────────────┐
 │ We will conquer the earth!!  │
 └──────────────────────────────┘
        _.---._
      .'       '.
  _.-~===========~-._
 (___O___O___O___O___)    ← blinking windows
       \_______/
        ·|·               ← pulsing tractor beam
       ·/|\·
      ·/ | \·
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  ← fixed terrain

• Flies right to left at 60fps (butter smooth)
• Pauses mid-screen to let you read the message
• Shows a cowsay-style speech bubble
• Blinking windows, pulsing tractor beam, floating motion, stars, terrain

Install

Via pip (recommended)

pip install ufosay

From source

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/ufosay.git
cd ufosay
pip install .

Usage

ufosay                          # UFO flies by silently
ufosay "Hello from space!"      # UFO with speech bubble
echo "hi" | ufosay              # Pipe input like cowsay
ufosay --msg "text"             # Explicit message flag
ufosay --help                   # Show usage

Examples

ufosay "We will conquer the earth!!"

 ________________________________________
/ We will conquer                        \
| the earth!!                            |
\                                        /
 ----------------------------------------
        _.---._
      .'       '.
  _.-~===========~-._
 (___________________)
       \_______/

Animation details

Feature	Detail
Frame rate	60 fps
Movement	30 cols/sec (1 col per 2 frames)
Direction	Right to left
Mid-screen pause	0.5 seconds per word
Vertical float	Frozen during pause for readability
Window blink	Alternates every ~0.33s
Tractor beam	Pulses every ~0.27s
Bubble style	Cowsay-style, word-wrapped at 40 chars
Bubble visibility	Only during mid-screen pause
Terrain	Fixed ~ row at bottom
Clean exit	Ctrl+C restores cursor, no leftover text

Mistype triggers (optional)

If you frequently mistype ls, run one of the install scripts to set up automatic triggers:

Linux / macOS

./install.sh

This adds aliases to ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc:

Typo	Triggers
ks	ufosay "Did you mean ls?"
cl	ufosay "Did you mean ls?"
xl	ufosay "Did you mean ls?"
lw	ufosay "Did you mean ls?"
lz	ufosay "Did you mean ls?"

Windows PowerShell

.\install.ps1

Windows CMD

install.bat

Requirements

• Python 3.8 or later
• Any terminal that supports ANSI escape codes (all modern terminals do)

License

MIT