Inline Preview

See generated images, video frames, and speech previews directly in your terminal.

How it works

When running in a terminal that supports the Kitty graphics protocol, generated images and video frames are displayed inline automatically. Generated speech can also play back in interactive terminals with an accurate waveform preview.

Supported terminals

Kitty

Full native support.

Ghostty

Full native support.

WezTerm

Full native support.

Warp

Full native support.

iTerm2

Supported via protocol detection.

Image preview

After generating an image, it appears directly in the terminal output:

bash

ai image "a mountain landscape"

Video preview

Video previews extract and decode an H.264 keyframe from the midpoint of the generated video using openh264 compiled to WebAssembly. No native dependencies are required.

bash

ai video "ocean waves"

Audio preview

audio speak plays generated speech after saving it and renders a waveform from decoded audio samples. WAV output is decoded directly; MP3 and other encoded formats use a local decoder when available (ffmpeg, mpg123, sox, or afconvert).

bash

ai audio speak "Read this as a friendly update"

Controlling preview

Disable inline preview for a single command:

bash

ai image "a sunset" --no-preview
ai video "a sunset" --no-preview
ai audio speak "hello" --no-play
ai audio speak "hello" --no-waveform

Force image and video preview on in terminals that aren't auto-detected:

bash

export AI_CLI_PREVIEW=1

Disable image and video preview globally:

bash

export AI_CLI_PREVIEW=0

AI_CLI_PREVIEW controls visual previews only. Use --no-play, --no-waveform, --quiet, or --json to disable audio playback and waveform previews.