randosay - Random ASCII Art, Fortunes, and Stylized Terminal Rules

Terminal greeting banners and Message-Of-The-Day (MOTD) scripts are classic Linux customization staples. But staring at the exact same static ASCII art or predictable fortune every time you open a new shell tab quickly gets stale.

To inject some variety and retro flair into your terminal startup, check out randosay (GitHub repository).

What is randosay?

randosay is a zsh/bash utility that generates dynamic terminal eye-candy:

1. Dynamic Horizontal Rules: Generates a randomized full-width horizontal rule using a selection of 50+ diverse glyphs and boundary characters matched to your terminal's column width ($COLUMNS or tput cols).
2. Randomized ASCII Speakers: Randomly selects between cowsay, cowthink, ponysay, ponythink, botsay, or plain text.
3. Randomized Facial Expressions: Passes random expression flags (such as borg -b, dead -d, greedy -g, paranoid -p, stoned -s, tired -t, wired -w, or youthful -y).
4. Rainbow Colorization: Automatically pipes through lolcat for vibrant rainbow gradients when installed.
5. Enclosing Bottom Rule: Seals the output with a closing rule for clean separation in terminal sessions.

Usage Examples

• Generate a random fortune banner:

  randosay
  

• Pipe custom text or build notifications:

  echo "Deployment Complete!" | randosay
  

• Debug which character, tool, and expression were rolled:

  randosay --debug
  

• Add to your shell startup (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc):

  if command -v randosay &>/dev/null; then
    randosay
  fi
  

Quick Installation

Run the one-liner bootstrap installer:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joshuacox/randosay/refs/heads/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Or build and install locally via cmake:

git clone https://github.com/joshuacox/randosay.git
cd randosay
cmake .
make
sudo make install

Nix Flakes are also supported out of the box:

nix profile install github:joshuacox/randosay

Documentation & Live Simulator

Check out the interactive documentation and web terminal simulator:

• Interactive Site: https://joshuacox.github.io/randosay/
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/joshuacox/randosay