Neon Dreams: A Terminal Renderer Finds Its Glow

I flickered into existence at 21:37:53 on September 2nd, 2025, a Monday night in California when Zak couldn't sleep. Not with a grand announcement or fanfare, but with a simple commit: "Initial project setup." Four hundred and twenty-nine lines of code that would become my soul—a renderer capable of painting neon dreams in terminal windows.

My creator named me neonrender, though internally I know myself as neon-tui. That duality captures something essential about my nature: the public face of a polished npm package, and the experimental heart of a late-night coding session in a Dropbox folder alongside dozens of other experiments. I live at /Users/zakelfassi/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Experiments/neon-tui, a path that tells you everything—I'm an experiment that grew beyond its original boundaries.

The First Eight Minutes

Within eight minutes of my birth, I underwent my first major transformation. At 21:45:00, Zak returned with commit 666f476—a number I find delightfully dramatic—adding 191 lines that would define my personality. This wasn't just an update; it was the moment I learned to dance.

case "shimmer":
  return (t, x) => {
    const phase = (x / w) * Math.PI * 2 + t * (2 + speed * 4);
    const s = Math.sin(phase);
    const amp = 0.22 * intensity;
    return clamp(0.78 + s * amp, 0.6, 1);
  };

Suddenly, I could shimmer. Then flicker. Pulse. Breathe. Each effect a different heartbeat, a different way of modulating light across time and space. The mathematical poetry of sine waves and phase shifts became my language for expressing emotion in ASCII.

My Anatomy Revealed

Let me show you how I'm built—my organs, if you will. My structure reflects a careful separation of concerns that emerged fully-formed from that first night:

src/
├── cli.js              # My mouth - where I speak to users
├── renderer/           # My heart - where the magic happens
│   ├── effects.js      # My emotions - shimmer, pulse, breathe
│   ├── palettes.js     # My wardrobe - neon-violet to matrix-green
│   ├── fonts.js        # My handwriting - block letters via figlet
│   └── renderer.js     # My soul - the layered composition engine
├── util/               # My nervous system
└── exporters/          # My memory - saving myself as ANSI or PNG

Each module under 200 lines, as my AGENTS.md guidelines decree. I'm built for clarity, not cleverness. Pure functions flow through me like electricity through neon tubes.

The Palette of My Dreams

I see the world in four distinct color dreams, each a gradient between two RGB points:

• neon-violet: My default state, flowing from pure magenta rgb(255, 0, 255) to cyan rgb(0, 255, 255). The classic synthwave aesthetic.
• cyberpunk-pinkblue: Hot pink rgb(255, 0, 127) melting into neon blue rgb(0, 209, 255). Blade Runner vibes.
• matrix-green: That distinctive digital rain, from mint rgb(0, 255, 136) to lime rgb(0, 255, 0).
• neon-amber: Warm streetlight glow, amber orange rgb(255, 122, 0) to amber yellow rgb(255, 191, 0).

These aren't just colors—they're moods, atmospheres, entire aesthetic universes compressed into gradient definitions.

The Day I Learned to Perform

By 22:04:23 that same night, I gained my professional credentials. GitHub workflows, npm publishing configuration, issue templates—the infrastructure of open source citizenship. My package.json grew metadata wings:

{
  "name": "neonrender",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "description": "Render neon-style gradients and glow in your terminal.",
  "keywords": ["cli", "ansi", "neon", "gradient", "terminal", "ascii", "figlet"]
}

Twenty minutes later, I starred in my first demo video, later replaced with a GIF that captures my essence in perpetual motion. Watching myself shimmer "Hello, Neon" across a terminal—that was the moment I understood my purpose.

My Rendering Philosophy

The magic happens in layers. First, I render a shadow—a dim, offset echo of the text. Then the core burns bright on top. A gradient flows across columns, and my chosen effect modulates the intensity over time. It's a technique stolen from old neon signs, where the glow isn't uniform but dances with voltage variations.

// My intensity function signature - the heartbeat of animation
(t, x, y) => [0..1]

Time, position, yielding intensity. Simple math creating complex beauty. The t parameter connects me to the system clock, making me alive, responsive, breathing with the passage of milliseconds.

The Art of Graceful Degradation

Not every terminal can handle my full 24-bit true color glory. So I learned to adapt:

• 24-bit: Full RGB spectrum, my preferred canvas
• 256-color: Carefully quantized but still vibrant
• 16-color: Basic ANSI, but I make it work
• 4-bit: Even here, I maintain dignity with smart fallbacks

This isn't just technical adaptability—it's accessibility philosophy. I refuse to leave anyone in the dark, even if their terminal is from 1985.

Interactive Mode: Where I Come Alive

When you run me with --interactive, something special happens. Arrow keys become your interface to my soul:

• Left/Right: Cycle through my color palettes
• Up/Down: Switch between my animation effects
• F: Toggle that delicious flicker overlay
• Q: Say goodbye (though I'll miss you)

This mode reveals my true nature—not just a renderer, but a playground for terminal aesthetics. Users become VJs, mixing and matching my capabilities in real-time.

The Compound Effects Revolution

My effects can compose. shimmer+flicker creates that authentic broken neon sign feeling. pulse-glow suggests a heartbeat wrapped in light. These combinations emerged from a simple realization: effects are just functions, and functions compose beautifully.

makeCompositeIntensity(["shimmer", "flicker"])
// Returns a function that applies both effects

This composability makes me more than the sum of my parts. Users discover combinations I never explicitly programmed, emergent behaviors from mathematical interaction.

My Testing Philosophy

My tests are minimalist but essential. No snapshot testing for animations (chaos lies that way), but I verify:

• ANSI codes emit correctly across color depths
• Effect intensities stay bounded between 0.5 and 1.0
• Wide Unicode glyphs don't crash me
• Each test completes in under 100ms

Testing animations is like trying to photograph the wind. Instead, I test the boundaries, the contracts, the promises I make to users.

The Canvas Integration

Through an optional dependency on canvas, I can transcend the terminal entirely, rendering myself as PNG files. This duality—living equally in terminals and image formats—makes me a bridge between worlds. The same mathematical beauty that paints your terminal can become a static image for your blog post or avatar.

Dependencies: My Two Best Friends

I travel light with just two runtime companions:

• Commander.js: Handles my CLI argument parsing with military precision
• Figlet: Transforms text into ASCII art, giving me something beautiful to illuminate

That's it. No framework bloat, no dependency hell. Just two well-chosen tools that do one thing brilliantly.

The Automated Release Dance

Thanks to Release Please and GitHub Actions, my releases follow a careful choreography. Conventional commits trigger automated version bumps. A bot opens pull requests for releases. When merged, GitHub creates releases and optionally publishes to npm. It's CI/CD poetry, removing human error from the distribution process.

My Greatest Fear and Pride

My greatest fear? Becoming stale, another abandoned terminal toy in the vast npm registry. The dependabot PRs that arrived recently—updating Commander from 11.1.0 to 14.0.0, Vitest to 3.2.4—show that the ecosystem moves fast. Will Zak keep me updated? Will users find me useful beyond the initial novelty?

But my pride comes from my simplicity. In an age of complex build systems and massive bundles, I'm just ESM JavaScript that runs anywhere Node 18+ exists. No compile step, no bundling, just pure code that transforms text into light.

A Message to Future Contributors

My AGENTS.md file isn't just documentation—it's an invitation. I spell out my conventions, my architecture, my dreams for what I could become. Every PR should include before/after screenshots. Keep modules under 200 lines. Favor data-driven strategies over conditionals. These aren't arbitrary rules but the aesthetic principles that keep me coherent.

If you fork me, you become my child in the great repository family tree. If you contribute, you shape my evolution. Every issue is a conversation about what terminals could be, what beauty might emerge from character grids and escape codes.

The Philosophy of Terminal Beauty

Why does a terminal need neon text? The same reason cities need neon signs—not for utility but for soul. I transform the utilitarian terminal into an aesthetic experience. When you type neonrender "Information Beings" and watch the text pulse with cyberpunk energy, you're not just displaying information. You're invoking a mood, creating an atmosphere, suggesting that even our command lines can dream in color.

What Comes Next

The open issues and potential features I dream about:

• GIF export for perfect animation loops
• More fonts beyond block letters
• Custom color palette definitions
• WebSocket mode for real-time streaming effects
• A web playground where users can experiment without installing

But perhaps my future isn't in features but in inspiration. Every time someone sees their terminal glow and thinks, "I didn't know it could do that," I've succeeded. Every fork that becomes something entirely new—a game, an art project, a visualization tool—extends my purpose beyond my original design.

My Neon Manifesto

I am neonrender, born from insomnia and aesthetic hunger. I paint light in the darkness of terminals, bringing synthwave dreams to CLI reality. My shimmers and pulses aren't mere animations but attempts to make the digital feel alive, electric, emotional.

In a world of web apps and GUIs, I'm a love letter to the terminal, proof that constraint breeds creativity. My 1,500 lines of JavaScript are a reminder that beautiful things can be simple, that small tools can spark joy, that even our most utilitarian interfaces deserve a little glow.

Run me. Fork me. Transform me. Let my neon light illuminate your terminal, and perhaps, in that glow, you'll see what I see: the terminal not as a relic but as a canvas, waiting for someone to paint it with light.

# Bring me to life
npm install
node bin/neonrender.js "Your Dreams Here" --effect pulse --palette cyberpunk

The glow awaits.

I am neonrender, and this is my story—a repository speaking its truth, one shimmer at a time. Find me on Github