Motion Video Director

A Claude Code skill for motion graphics and video editing.

Plan, animate, edit, voice and sound-design complete videos with Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. Everything renders locally, with no After Effects or Premiere.

_{Every frame above was written and rendered by Claude Code using this skill.}

Claude-compatible packaging and setup safety improvements, retaining all 3.5.1 helper fixes below.

• Valid YAML frontmatter with a shorter description and a host-specific installation guide.
• Safer MCP/credential setup: dotenv files are data, not shell scripts; existing credentials are preserved by default.
• Unique preview caches, no review-clip overwrites, input validation, configured FFmpeg support and nonzero exit status on MP4 failure.
• 22 automated checks passed on Windows with synthetic test media, plus archive integrity/layout checks. Live Claude upload, paid API calls and other operating systems were not tested.

Download: Claude Code plugin ZIP. This is a plugin package, not a direct Claude app custom-skill ZIP. See installation and host limits.

Portable on-demand guides, local audio analysis and consent-gated ElevenLabs SFX generation, plus the helper fixes reported in PR #2. Thanks to @Aliang-CN for the detailed bug report, fixes and render-starter proposal. The equivalent fixes are implemented in the newer cross-platform helpers rather than merging older helper code.

• Accurate preview timestamps and explicit audio inputs.
• Reference analysis refreshes old generated outputs, groups 30 frames per sheet and clearly skips audio for silent references.
• Setup inventory checks runtime versions and selected Playwright/Chromium file availability; a smoke test still checks actual rendering.
• Ready-to-copy deterministic rendering starter at skills/motion-video-director/templates/render/.
• No SFX collection, model weights, private credentials or customer project files are bundled.

Motion Video Director turns a coding agent into a video production team. It handles the work a motion designer, editor and sound designer would normally do:

• Motion graphics and animated explainers, drawn in code (Canvas, SVG, Three.js, GSAP)
• Editing raw footage and talking-head clips: cuts, punch zooms, captions, B-roll, text behind the subject
• Voiceover scripts for ElevenLabs, with word-level timing for every shot
• Sound design synced to the frame and mixed to platform loudness (-14 LUFS)
• Final MP4 renders in 9:16, 16:9 or 1:1

The skill is a production playbook (SKILL.md) plus a set of helper scripts. The agent follows a fixed process with approval gates, so you review the script, the plan and a preview before anything is fully rendered.

All of these were made with this skill.

AI Creates Motion Graphic	Motion keyboard	Brud Code launch
Watch on Instagram	Watch on Instagram	Watch on Instagram

The launch ad for this skill was also produced with it: a 56-second, 1080p SaaS ad with voiceover, 2D/3D animation and a full sound mix.

Run this in your project folder. It works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents that support skills:

npx skills add Miftahul-Islam-Efaz/Motion-graphics-skill

You need Node.js installed. The installer asks which agent you use and copies the skill to the right folder.

Inside Claude Code, run:

/plugin marketplace add Miftahul-Islam-Efaz/Motion-graphics-skill
/plugin install motion-video-director@motion-graphics-skill

Restart Claude Code afterwards.

1. Click Code → Download ZIP at the top of this page and unzip it.
2. Copy the skills/motion-video-director folder into one of these locations:
   • ~/.claude/skills/ to use it in every project (on Windows: C:\Users\<you>\.claude\skills\)
   • .claude/skills/ inside a project to use it only there
3. Restart Claude Code.

For Codex, Cursor or other agents, copy the folder into your project and tell the agent:

Read skills/motion-video-director/SKILL.md and follow it for this video project.

Describe the video you want and attach references if you have them.

Make a 30-second 9:16 launch reel for my SaaS. References attached.

Edit my raw talking-head clip into a reel with captions, punch zooms and B-roll.

Create a 45-second product explainer of our dashboard. Clean UI animation, subtle sound design.

The agent then works through these steps:

1. Brief. Collects references, story, audience, format and length.
2. Voiceover script. Writes a script ready to paste into ElevenLabs. You generate the MP3 and send it back.
3. Storyboard. Times every shot to the words in the voiceover.
4. Build. Animates the scenes in code and edits any footage you provided.
5. Preview. Renders contact sheets of each scene and fixes problems before the full render.
6. Render and mix. Exports the final video with sound design and loudness normalization, then runs a QA checklist.

You approve the script, the plan and the preview before the final render. Progress is logged in PROGRESS.md, so a new session can continue where the last one stopped.

.claude-plugin/
  plugin.json            Plugin manifest
  marketplace.json       Marketplace entry for one-command install
skills/motion-video-director/
  SKILL.md               The production playbook
  config.example.json    Optional project-local path configuration
  LICENSE.md             Skill licence
  reference/             On-demand production, setup, audio and delivery guides
  scripts/
    preflight.py         Read-only tool/version and browser-file inventory
    preflight.sh         Compatibility wrapper for preflight.py
    preview.mjs          Range preview, contact sheet and optional audio clip
    analyze_ref.py       Refreshable reference frames, cuts and optional audio
    analyze_ref.sh       Compatibility wrapper for analyze_ref.py
    create_env.py        Creates empty key slots without exposing values
    create_env.sh        Legacy shell entrypoint retained
    normalize_env.py     Converts an existing key file into a clean .env
    ...                  Local audio, procedural SFX and consent-gated API helpers
  templates/
    render/              Deterministic Canvas/Playwright rendering starter
    TASTE.md             Project-specific visual and sound direction
    design.html          Design review starter

Core helpers: Python 3.10+, FFmpeg and ffprobe. Browser rendering additionally uses Node.js 18+ and compatible Playwright/Chromium. Reuse installed tools; ask before installing or downloading anything. Pillow provides reference-sheet labels; FFmpeg provides an explicitly unlabelled fallback, so ImageMagick is optional.

Optional: Python packages such as faster-whisper, rembg and demucs for transcription, cutouts and stem separation; NumPy/SciPy and librosa/soundfile for local audio work. CLAP/PANNs are optional; CoNeTTE is experimental/manual, not a required tested integration. You can also add API keys or MCP servers for Firecrawl, Freesound, Pixabay, Unsplash and LottieFiles.

To see what is installed and what is missing, run:

python "skills/motion-video-director/scripts/preflight.py"

API keys are stored in a local .env file, which is excluded from git.

The inventory makes no installs/downloads and does not launch a browser. Browser-file presence is not a successful launch test. For a new project, copy templates/render/ into project src/ (never overwrite an existing renderer), set package.json "type":"module", and run the smoke test in reference/planning-and-tracking.md. Use --mp4 --audio <mix.wav> for a preview with sound; --mp4 alone is silent. No paid API call is needed for rendering.

See LICENSE.md for the skill licence; third-party assets/providers have separate terms. RELEASE_CHECKS.json records the validation scope. The helper regression suite passed on Windows with synthetic media; full macOS rendering and model inference are not claimed tested.

Do I need After Effects or Premiere Pro? No. Animation is written in code and rendered with headless Chrome and ffmpeg.

Can it edit existing footage, or only create animation? Both. It can cut, caption, grade and sound-design raw clips, and combine them with motion graphics.

What does it cost to run? Rendering is free and local. ElevenLabs and some stock-media APIs have their own pricing; their free tiers cover most projects.

Does it work outside Claude Code? Yes. It works with any agent that can run terminal commands and edit files, including Codex and Cursor.

Made by Miftahul Islam Efaz. If you make something with it, tag me on Instagram.

© 2026 Miftahul Islam Efaz. All rights reserved.