An agent skill for crafting cinematic product videos: 157 shot recipe cards · 214 styles · 214 motion previews · a production-ready template
video-shotcraft is an AI agent skill that turns Claude Code or Codex into a motion-design studio: point it at your product and it storyboards, animates, and sound-designs a cinematic promo, marketing, launch, or demo video with Remotion — real page captures, 2.5D camera moves, beat-synced cuts, and film-grade SFX included.
🖼️ Browse all 214 motion previews in the live Gallery »
✨ What's new
[!IMPORTANT]
🔥 2026-08 · New in the series: video-talkcraft, for narration videos
video-talkcraft is the narration-video installment of this series. Hand it a script plus a finished voiceover and every motion beat locks to the voice: word-level timestamps aligned locally (median 20–40 ms per character), 78 motion recipe cards, a 7-layer anti-slideshow shot system (continuous camera curves, parallax planes, idle/yield lifecycle, breathing environment), plain-cut subtitles, and triple-gate QA. Same recipe-card + Remotion workflow as here, retuned for talking content.
🎙️ Project page » · 🖼️ Browse all 78 narration motion previews »
- 🌟 2026-08 · 48 new shot recipe cards — the library grows from 104 to
152 cards / 209 previews. Distilled from 209 candidate motions through
eight rounds of frame-by-frame review against reference footage, then folded
into the regular Gallery categories with full recipe cards, native Remotion
components (
demos/<category>/<name>/<Component>.tsx, deterministic and driven by the normalized progresst— see demos/README.md for the wiring snippet), and motion previews. All de-branded: neutral placeholder copy and a single swappableACCENTcolor variable. - 🎞️ 2026-08 · JianYing (CapCut CN) project export — after final delivery the film can be exported as an editable JianYing draft: the plate is cut per shot (retime/reorder/grade), captions are rebuilt as native text tracks (content/size/color editable), SFX/BGM land on separate audio tracks. Verified on JianYing Pro 11.2 for macOS; see references/jianying-export.md.
🎬 Showcase
The 38-second Gallery intro below was itself produced with this skill — storyboard, shot implementation, and sound design were all done by an agent following the toolkit's methodology:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cba2df8a-4b2e-4247-bace-d0b1dea9c2bd
Browse every shot card and motion preview online: Gallery — search, filter, switch between variants, and copy selected shot-card names.
🚀 Quick start
The most direct way: hand the repo link to your agent. In Claude Code / Codex or a similar agent, just say:
Install this skill for me: https://github.com/Vincentwei1021/video-shotcraft
The agent will clone the repo and link it into your skills directory. Or install with the skills CLI / manually:
npx skills add Vincentwei1021/video-shotcraft
git clone https://github.com/Vincentwei1021/video-shotcraft.git
cd video-shotcraft
ln -s "$(pwd)" ~/.claude/skills/video-shotcraft # Claude Code
# or
ln -s "$(pwd)" ~/.codex/skills/video-shotcraft # Codex
Then make requests like:
Use video-shotcraft to create a promo for my desktop product.
Use the deck-deal-flyin and row-embed shot cards to present this feature.
Design a product close-up inspired by spotlight-hero-card.
If no shot card is specified, the skill introduces the built-in video template first and asks whether to use it; you can also pick shots in the Gallery before starting.
📼 Video template: Ink Press
The skill ships with Ink Press — a validated, complete promo template: 36.2 seconds, 1920×1080, 30fps, 10 shots in a paper-ink-amber style, with 2.5D real-page camera moves, title cards, transitions, and a fully pinned cinematic SFX pass:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/4cf5af51-98f3-4af2-8ab2-7267f470513d
To use it, just tell your agent:
Use video-shotcraft to make a promo for my product with the Ink Press template.
The agent swaps in your product's screenshots, copy, and branding to reproduce the same quality — the fastest, most reliable path to a finished film.
More templates are on the way.
Headless / CI notes
Rendering on a headless Linux box (tested: 2 cores, Node 22) hits three walls worth knowing:
- Concurrency cap —
remotion still/renderfails with "Maximum for --concurrency is 2" on low-core machines. Fix: pass--concurrency=1. - Old Headless removal — recent Chrome/Chromium dropped old headless mode; pointing Remotion at system chromium fails to launch. Fix: use a chrome-headless-shell binary instead of full Chrome.
- Blocked CDN — if remotion.media is unreachable, the automatic
headless-shell download is rejected. Fix:
--browser-executable=<path-to-local chrome-headless-shell>.
With these three flags, frame renders from the bundled template work.
📦 What's included
| Content | Description |
|---|---|
| 157 shot recipe cards | Purpose, energy, suggested duration, parameters, implementation notes, and known pitfalls |
| 214 motion previews | Covering 214 styles; searchable and filterable in the online Gallery |
| Remotion implementations | Tuned TSX demos containing the actual easing and timing parameters for each card |
| Complete video template | A validated 36.2-second, 1920×1080, 30fps product promo with 10 shots |
| Components and assets | 2.5D page camera, captions, flash cuts, digit rolls, SFX, and capture scripts |
| Production methodology | Capture, visual direction, storyboarding, sound design, beat sync, and final QA |
| JianYing project export | Load the film into JianYing (CapCut CN) for further editing — per-shot speed, captions, and audio all editable (verified on macOS 11.2) |
The toolkit primarily targets web and desktop product promos, while individual shot cards can also be used in feature demos, brand films, launch videos, and other motion projects.
🗂 Repository structure
video-shotcraft/
├── SKILL.md # Agent entry point and core production rules
├── references/
│ ├── pipeline.md # End-to-end production workflow
│ ├── shots/ # 157 shot recipe cards in 10 functional categories
│ ├── sequences/ # Reusable full-video structures and sequence patterns
│ ├── aesthetic-rules.md # Visual QA criteria
│ ├── music-beat-sync.md # BGM analysis and beat-sync methodology
│ ├── sound-design.md # Sound-design guidance and examples
│ └── jianying-export.md # JianYing (CapCut CN) project-export guide
├── demos/ # Remotion reference implementations (same categories)
├── gallery/ # Static motion-preview Gallery
├── template/ # Runnable complete video template
├── jianying-export/ # JianYing draft installers (mac tested / win untested)
└── assets/
├── lib/ # Reusable Remotion components
├── scripts/ # Page-asset capture scripts
└── audio/ # Audio assets
├── bgm/ # 5 BGM options
└── sfx/<category>/ # 149 SFX across 16 scene categories
For the complete workflow and implementation requirements, see SKILL.md, the production pipeline, and the visual QA criteria.
🔊 Audio and asset notes
Audio files under assets/audio/ may be used according to their respective license terms.
See ATTRIBUTION.md for sources and license details.
SFX are organized into 16 scene/material categories (transition impact riser
camera ui text paper film light data scifi mech glass fluid
crowd counter) — **pick the category first, then the