taker

A CLI tool for generating professional, publication-ready code and HTTP evidence screenshots for security audits, SAST pipelines, MCP servers, and AI agents.

Produces VS Code Dark+-styled PNG images with syntax highlighting, line numbers, file icons, and red highlight overlays — without requiring a browser, Electron, or any GUI dependency. Single self-contained binary with embedded fonts.

Installation

Download binary (recommended)

Download the latest release for your platform from the releases page:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)
curl -L https://github.com/tachote/taker/releases/latest/download/taker_Darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv taker /usr/local/bin/

# macOS (Intel)
curl -L https://github.com/tachote/taker/releases/latest/download/taker_Darwin_x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv taker /usr/local/bin/

# Linux (amd64)
curl -L https://github.com/tachote/taker/releases/latest/download/taker_Linux_x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo mv taker /usr/local/bin/

go install

go install github.com/tachote/taker@latest

Requires Go 1.22+.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/tachote/taker
cd taker
go build -o taker .

Features

• VS Code Dark+ aesthetics — tab bar, gutter, syntax highlighting, file type icons (Nerd Fonts)
• 10 built-in themes — VS Code Dark+, Dracula, Nord, Catppuccin Mocha, GitHub Dark, Gruvbox, One Dark, Monokai, Solarized Dark, Rosé Pine
• Line selection — render only the lines you need (1,5,10-20,30-40), with automatic gap indicators (⋮) between non-adjacent ranges
• Context mode — automatically include N lines around highlighted lines (--context 5)
• Highlight overlay — red background + border on arbitrary lines or ranges (13,15 or 10-20)
• Word wrap — wrap long lines with continuation indicators, like VS Code
• HTTP evidence mode — side-by-side Request / Response panels for documenting HTTP vulnerabilities
• Stdin support — pipe code directly without creating a temp file
• Self-contained binary — JetBrains Mono and Symbols Nerd Font are embedded; no runtime dependencies

Usage

Code evidence

taker [file] [flags]

Examples

# Render a full file
taker auth.go -o evidence.png

# Highlight a specific vulnerability (line 42)
taker auth.py -H 42 -o evidence.png

# Highlight with 5 lines of context — ideal for SAST/AI agents
taker auth.py -H 42 -c 5 -o evidence.png

# Non-contiguous lines with gap indicator
taker config.go -n "1-10,45-60" -H "52,57" -o evidence.png

# Wrap long lines (e.g. YAML with inline comments)
taker application.yml -H "13,15" -c 4 -w -o evidence.png

# From stdin
cat vuln.js | taker -l javascript -t "vuln.js" -H 8 -o evidence.png

# Dracula theme
taker secrets.py -H 15 -T dracula -o evidence.png

Highlight + context (VS Code Dark+):

taker render/render.go -H 279-283 -c 4 -o evidence.png

Dracula theme, non-contiguous highlights:

taker main.go -H 56,59 -c 3 -T dracula -o evidence.png

Catppuccin Mocha, line selection:

taker render/theme.go -n "1-30" -H 17-22 -T catppuccin-mocha -o evidence.png

HTTP evidence

taker http -r <request-file> -s <response-file> [flags]

Renders a side-by-side Request / Response panel image, similar to Burp Suite's repeater view.

Examples

# Basic HTTP evidence
taker http -r request.http -s response.http -o evidence.png

# Highlight the credential leak line in request and the token in response
taker http -r request.http -s response.http --hr "8" --hs "15" -o evidence.png

# Wider panels for responses with long headers
taker http -r req.http -s res.http --wrap-width 110 -o evidence.png

Credential leak — highlighted request line 8, response line 6 (Dracula):

taker http -r request.http -s response.http --hr 8 --hs 6 -T dracula -o evidence.png

Request file format (request.http):

POST /oauth2/token HTTP/2
Host: auth.example.com
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

grant_type=client_credentials&client_secret=EXPOSED_SECRET

Response file format (response.http):

HTTP/2 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{"access_token": "eyJ..."}

Themes

taker --list-themes

Integration

MCP server (AI agents)

taker is designed to be called by MCP servers and AI agents as part of automated security reporting pipelines. The binary is fully autonomous — no dialogs, no GUI, no network access.

import subprocess

def generate_evidence(file_path: str, highlight_lines: str, context: int = 5, output: str = "evidence.png") -> str:
    result = subprocess.run([
        "taker", file_path,
        "--highlight", highlight_lines,
        "--context", str(context),
        "--output", output,
    ], capture_output=True, text=True)
    if result.returncode != 0:
        raise RuntimeError(result.stderr)
    return output

SAST pipeline

# GitHub Actions example
- name: Generate vulnerability evidence
  run: |
    taker src/auth/login.py \
      --highlight "${{ env.VULN_LINE }}" \
      --context 5 \
      --theme github-dark \
      --output evidence/${{ env.FINDING_ID }}.png

Fluid Attacks MCP integration

taker is the evidence generation backend for the fluid-mcp server. The generate_code_evidence tool calls taker to produce screenshot evidence that is then uploaded to Fluid Attacks Integrates via GraphQL.

How it works

Source file
    │
    ▼
highlight.Tokenize()          ← chroma lexer (200+ languages)
    │  syntax tokens with RGB colors
    ▼
highlight.FilterLines()       ← apply --lines spec, insert gap sentinels
    │
    ▼
render.buildVisualLines()     ← apply word wrap if --wrap
    │
    ▼
render.Render()               ← 4-pass image composition
    │   Pass 1: fill backgrounds (editor, tab bar, gutter)
    │   Pass 2: draw header (tab bar or HTTP panel header)
    │   Pass 3: draw visual lines (line numbers, tokens, highlights)
    │   Pass 4: draw highlight border
    ▼
png.Encode()                  ← output PNG at 144 DPI (2× retina quality)

For HTTP mode, RenderHTTP() runs two parallel render passes and composites the panels side by side with a vertical divider.

Supported languages

Any language supported by chroma — 200+ lexers including Go, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Rust, PHP, Ruby, C/C++, C#, YAML, JSON, SQL, Bash, HCL/Terraform, XML, HTML, and HTTP.

Language is auto-detected from the file extension. Override with --lang:

taker payload.txt --lang sql -H 3 -o evidence.png

File type icons

Icons are rendered using Symbols Nerd Font embedded in the binary. Supported file types with distinct icons:

.go .py .js .ts .tsx .jsx .rs .java .rb .php .cs .c .cpp .h .html .css .scss .yaml .yml .md .sh .sql .tf .hcl .xml

Dependencies

Embedded assets:

• JetBrains Mono — code font (SIL Open Font License 1.1)
• Symbols Nerd Font — file type icons (MIT License)

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Third-party licenses:

• JetBrains Mono: SIL Open Font License 1.1
• Symbols Nerd Font: MIT License
• chroma: MIT License
• kong: MIT License