genact

genact is a nonsense activity generator. It prints realistic-looking terminal output for tasks that are not actually running, such as compiling a kernel, running a Cargo build, dumping memory, or brute-forcing a password. Nothing is executed; the output is simulated for display.

It ships with a set of scenes called modules: ansible, bootlog, botnet, bruteforce, cargo, cc, composer, cryptomining, docker_build, docker_image_rm, download, julia, kernel_compile, memdump, mkinitcpio, rkhunter, simcity, terraform, uv, weblog, and wpt. By default it cycles through them. Command-line options let you list modules (-l), run only selected ones (-m), set a global speed factor (-s), print a number of lines instantly (-i), and exit after a set time (--exit-after-time, e.g. 2h10min) or after a number of modules (--exit-after-modules). It can also generate shell completions for bash, elvish, fish, powershell, and zsh, and a man page.

A web version runs at svenstaro.github.io/genact via WebAssembly, where modules and speed are chosen with URL parameters (?module=cc&module=memdump, ?speed-factor=5). Prebuilt binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, and it is also compatible with FreeBSD. A Docker image (svenstaro/genact) is available too. It is written in Rust. Typical uses are demos, screen fillers, and joke or prank setups.

Installation

# via Homebrew
brew install genact

# via Cargo
cargo install genact

# via Scoop
scoop install genact