RenderDoc CLI Skill
Headless command-line analysis of RenderDoc GPU frame captures (.rdc files).
Capabilities
- Capture inspection: metadata, sections, thumbnails, format conversion
- Action tree: list/search/filter draw calls, clears, dispatches, markers
- Texture operations: list, inspect, export (PNG/JPG/DDS/HDR/EXR), pixel picking
- Pipeline state: full shader/RT/viewport state at any event
- Shader analysis: export shader in human-readable form (HLSL/GLSL/disasm), constant buffer readback
- Resource inspection: buffer/texture enumeration, raw data reading
- Mesh data: vertex shader input/output decoding
- GPU counters: enumerate and fetch hardware performance counters
Command Groups
capture
actions
textures
pipeline
resources
mesh
counters
Preview Bundles
RenderDoc preview support is for truthful capture inspection rather than live creative preview.
Typical preview bundle contents:
- capture thumbnail
- output-target images
pipeline_state.jsonaction_summary.json
Diff bundles additionally include:
- A/B thumbnails
- A/B output-target images
pipeline_diff.json
RenderDoc does not currently expose live preview sessions. Instead, each
capture/diff bundle appends to a stable recipe-level trajectory.json.
Viewer commands:
JSON Mode
All commands support --json for machine-readable output:
Environment Variables
Agent Usage Notes
- Use
pipeline shader-exportto extract shaders — for binary shaders (DXBC/SPIR-V) it auto-exports embedded HLSL/GLSL source or falls back to disassembly; for text shaders (GLSL/HLSL) it saves the raw source directly - Shader formats by capture API:
- D3D11 → DXBC binary, exported as embedded HLSL source (
.hlsl) or bytecode asm (.dxbc.asm) - OpenGL/GLES → GLSL source text (
.glsl), already human-readable - Vulkan → SPIR-V binary, exported as embedded GLSL source (
.glsl) or SPIR-V asm (.spv.asm)
- D3D11 → DXBC binary, exported as embedded HLSL source (
- Use
pipeline diffto compare two events — it writes a JSON file and prints only the path; use-bfor a second capture - Always specify
--jsonfor programmatic consumption - Use
actions summaryfirst to understand capture complexity - Use
actions list --draws-onlyto focus on actual rendering - Use
preview captureorpreview diffwhen the agent needs a portable, honest inspection bundle rather than raw replay calls alone - Read
_trajectory_pathfrom preview JSON if you need persistent capture/diff history - Use
cli-hub previews ...only to inspect/open already-generated bundles - Pipeline state requires an event ID from the action list
- Texture save supports: png, jpg, bmp, tga, hdr, exr, dds
- Buffer data can be decoded as hex, float32, uint32, or raw bytes


