$ framewatch gallery

See it work

The interactive piece from the front page, with room to try it, followed by framewatch’s logo, colors and type.

Five seconds of tests, three frames worth keeping.

If you record a screen continuously, a coding agent drowns in near-identical frames. If you take a screenshot on demand, you miss everything that happened in between. framewatch watches one window and saves a frame only when something meaningful happens.

Terminal — cargo test

$ cargo test
   Compiling framewatch v0.8.5
running 10 tests
test engine_static::static_window_emits_only_initial ... ok
test engine_static::single_change_then_static_settles_once ... ok
test engine_spinner::spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_value::volatile_region_is_throttled_not_per_frame ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::auto_spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::scattered_churn_is_not_an_auto_spinner ... ok
test engine_sustained_motion::sustained_change_produces_periodic_keyframes ... ok
test dedup::identical_busy_end_frame_is_deduped ... ok
test crop::crop_clamps_and_handles_out_of_bounds ... ok
test crop::watch_with_crop_produces_cropped_images ... ok

test result: ok. 10 passed; 0 failed

.framewatch/2026-06-14T06-22-17_Terminal/timeline.jsonl

{"seq":0,"kind":"initial","elapsed_ms":0,"image":"frames/000000_initial.png","note":"Session start."}
{"seq":1,"kind":"busy_start","elapsed_ms":1200,"image":null,"note":"Test runner started (spinner active)."}
{"seq":2,"kind":"busy_end","elapsed_ms":4830,"image":"frames/000002_busy_end.png","coalesced_frames":71,"note":"Spinner stopped after 3.63s; 71 animation frames collapsed."}
{"seq":3,"kind":"settled","elapsed_ms":5180,"image":"frames/000003_settled.png","note":"Settled: test results rendered."}

```
$ cargo test
```
initial 0.00s

$ cargo test
   Compiling framewatch v0.8.5
running 10 tests
test engine_static::static_window_emits_only_initial ... ok
test engine_static::single_change_then_static_settles_once ... ok
test engine_spinner::spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_value::volatile_region_is_throttled_not_per_frame ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::auto_spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::scattered_churn_is_not_an_auto_spinner ... ok
test engine_sustained_motion::sustained_change_produces_periodic_keyframes ... ok
test dedup::identical_busy_end_frame_is_deduped ... ok
test crop::crop_clamps_and_handles_out_of_bounds ... ok
test crop::watch_with_crop_produces_cropped_images ... ok

busy_end 4.83s

$ cargo test
   Compiling framewatch v0.8.5
running 10 tests
test engine_static::static_window_emits_only_initial ... ok
test engine_static::single_change_then_static_settles_once ... ok
test engine_spinner::spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_value::volatile_region_is_throttled_not_per_frame ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::auto_spinner_collapses_to_busy_then_settled ... ok
test engine_auto_spinner::scattered_churn_is_not_an_auto_spinner ... ok
test engine_sustained_motion::sustained_change_produces_periodic_keyframes ... ok
test dedup::identical_busy_end_frame_is_deduped ... ok
test crop::crop_clamps_and_handles_out_of_bounds ... ok
test crop::watch_with_crop_produces_cropped_images ... ok

test result: ok. 10 passed; 0 failed

settled 5.18s

A recorder at 14 fps would keep: 73 frames
framewatch keeps: 3 frames, 4 events

An animated illustration of a capture session. The events, timings and notes are the “run tests” example from framewatch’s README, and the test names are real tests from its repository.

Assets

Logo, colors, and type.

Mark

The project’s generated logo mark. The grid gets finer with the commit count, and the cells show the split between languages. It’s redrawn as the project grows.

Palette

The colors framewatch uses across this site: one hue from its discipline’s band, plus the shades that make it work on both dark and light backgrounds.

framewatch Developer & agent tooling DM SANS · NEWSREADER · DM MONO

Type

The two typefaces on the site: a sans-serif for the interface and a serif for headlines.

Install framewatch

It’s on crates.io. Pick the capture backend for your platform. The detection engine is the same on all three.

Windows cargo install framewatch --features wgc

macOS 14+ cargo install framewatch --features macos

Linux (X11) cargo install framewatch --features linux-x11

As a library cargo add framewatch --no-default-features

Add gui for the window picker, or record for narrated capture. On macOS you’ll be asked for Screen Recording permission the first time it runs. Wayland isn’t supported yet.

crates.io Documentation Prebuilt binaries Read the source

Questions, or something it doesn’t do yet? Email dmoore@dwmmholdings.com