Comment by debba

Hi HN,

I built rewindtty, a small tool in C that lets you record a terminal session and later replay it, using a simple JSON log format that includes:

- timestamp - command (user input) - output (stdout) - stderr

It works like this:

- rewindtty record session.json # Runs a shell, records the session - rewindtty replay session.json # Replays it step by step

Under the hood:

- Uses fork() to manage the pseudo-terminal - Captures stdout/stderr with timestamps - Stores everything in structured JSON for easy analysis, replay or transformation

Why I made this: I wanted a minimal tool to track terminal interactions — for debugging, documentation, and reproducibility — without relying on heavier tools or external formats.

It’s still early, but the core works and I’d love feedback or suggestions.

GitHub: https://github.com/debba/rewindtty