Command Line

The tegaki package ships a command that writes text as an animated SVG file. It needs no project setup, so it suits READMEs, slides, static sites and scripts (including coding agents) that just want a file.

npx tegaki "Tegaki is awesome"

This writes tegaki-is-awesome.svg in the current directory: the text, self-drawing and repeating forever, in Caveat.

Examples

# Draw once and stay finished, in another bundled font
npx tegaki "Hello World" --font tangerine --mode once -o hello.svg

# Overlap the letters, bigger and darker
npx tegaki "ABC" --stagger 80% --size 140 --color "#222"

# Right-to-left text is shaped and joined correctly
npx tegaki "مرحبا بالعالم" --font amiri --mode once

# Effects use the same options as the renderer
npx tegaki "Glow" --effects '{"glow":{"radius":10,"color":"#f0a"}}'

# Write to stdout, for piping
npx tegaki "Hi" -o - > hi.svg

Options

Option	Default	Description
-o, --output <file>	<slug>.svg	Output path; - writes to stdout
-f, --font <name>	caveat	A bundled font; --list-fonts prints them
-m, --mode <mode>	loop	loop (repeats forever), once (draws itself once, then stays complete) or static (finished artwork, no animation)
--size <px>	100	Font size
--color <css>	#1a1a1a	Stroke color
--line-height <px>	font metrics	Line height
--stagger <advance>	off	Overlap glyphs instead of drawing them in sequence, e.g. 80% or 0.3 (seconds)
--speed <x>	1	Playback speed multiplier
--loop-hold <s>	1.5	In loop mode, seconds the finished text holds before fading
--letter-spacing <px>	0	Extra space after each character
--stroke-easing, --glyph-easing	ease-out-quad, linear	Easing of each stroke and of each glyph’s time
--pressure <0-1>	1	Variable stroke width
--clip <scale> / --no-clip	1.2	Clip strokes to the letter outlines
--effects <json>	none	Renderer effects: glow, wobble, taper, strokeGradient, globalGradient
--seed <n>	0	Seed for wobble and gradient variation
--no-shaping	off	One glyph per character, no ligatures, joining or bidi

Run npx tegaki --help for the full list.

What it does not do

• The text must fit the character set of the chosen font. See Getting Started for the bundled fonts.
• It writes SVG only. For PNG, GIF or WebM, use Tegaki Studio; for an app, use the renderer.