macos-screen-recorder (sck-record)

sck-record is a compiled macOS CLI binary, built from sck-record.swift via swiftc -O sck-record.swift -o sck-record or by a bundled setup-machine script, that records the main display plus system audio using ScreenCaptureKit:

./sck-record <out.mp4> <seconds>

Its differentiator is capturing system audio from the command line with zero install - no BlackHole or other virtual loopback audio device, no sudo, only the standard one-time Screen Recording permission granted to whatever app shells out to it. It is explicitly not a general "better than OBS/Screen Studio" tool; it fills exactly the headless-CLI-with-system-audio gap that QuickTime and screencapture -v cannot cover without a virtual audio device. It is a raw capture primitive only - it records and does nothing else. To polish a recording afterward with idle speed-up, auto-zoom, keystroke chips, smoothed cursor, or vertical export, it pairs with a separate screenstudio-alternative-skill: record with sck-record --no-cursor <out.mp4> <seconds>, then run that skill's post-production pass on the resulting mp4. Auto-zoom and keystroke overlays additionally need an input-event log captured during recording, which the pairing skill supplies; sck-record's pixels alone cover idle speed-up, cursor smoothing, and vertical export.

Use it when scripting a screen recording with system sound on macOS from the CLI - demos, captures, or voice-demo recording - the specific case QuickTime and screencapture -v can't cover without a virtual audio device. Do not use it expecting editing, captions, auto-zoom, or social-format polish out of the box; those require pairing it with the screenstudio-alternative-skill post-production pass. It only works on macOS, depends on ScreenCaptureKit, and requires the user to have granted Screen Recording permission.

Input is an output file path and a duration in seconds. Output is an mp4 file containing the main display capture and system audio:

./sck-record <out.mp4> <seconds>

Built on Apple's ScreenCaptureKit framework; pairs with the screenstudio-alternative-skill for post-production - idle speed-up, auto-zoom, keystroke overlays, cursor smoothing, vertical export - which separately supplies the input-event log that auto-zoom and keystroke overlays require.

Developers on macOS who need to script system-audio screen recordings for demos or voice-over captures from the command line, without installing a virtual audio device.