Cbirds: A flock of birds in your terminal
Cbirds is a lightweight, dependency-free C99 program that renders a flock of birds in the terminal using braille or the Kitty graphics protocol. It is available for installation on macOS and Linux via Homebrew, apt, or manual compilation.
Why it matters
It serves as a niche utility for terminal enthusiasts and developers interested in lightweight, cross-platform CLI tools.
cbirds --render kitty --hawks 2 --color ice --speed 0
Craig Reynolds' boids, drawn in braille in any terminal, and as sprites over the Kitty graphics protocol in Kitty and Ghostty. One C99 program, no dependencies. Every clip on this page was recorded by cbirds itself.
Homebrew macOS and Linux. Completions for bash, zsh and fish come with it, and brew upgrade keeps it up to date.
brew install clainstone/tap/cbirds apt Debian 12, Ubuntu 22.04 and later, and their derivatives, on amd64 or arm64, from its apt repository . Completions come with it, and sudo apt upgrade keeps it up to date.
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