scenecast

One asset definition. One typed JSON shape. Many rendering targets. The agent's view of the world, cast onto any surface.

Typed asset shapes + visual + headless views for AI agents. Authors return WidgetData JSON per size; the framework converts:

• JSON (WidgetData) — the canonical primitive every author writes. Same JSON shape Daslab iOS, Daslab web, and any third-party renderer can consume.
• HTML — rendered from WidgetData for humans, dashboards, the scene-otel scrubber, iOS/web viewers
• Markdown — rendered from WidgetData for LLM context injection (3–5× cheaper in tokens than dumping raw JSON, while preserving the structure agents need to reason about)
• Text — rendered from WidgetData for terminals and text-only models

Ships with 6 canonical types in core — abstract primitives any vendor can implement: Email, Message, Contact, Event, Task, Document. Plus a library of widget primitives (Table, Metric, List, KeyValue, Calendar, Status, Document, Image, Plan, Stack).

Vendor extensions ship with benchmarks, not core. Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, SAP S/4HANA — these live in benchmark-scoped repos like scenebench, which delivers scenecast extensions for every vendor in its benchmark domain. Each benchmark gets a magnet URL on daslab.dev (e.g. daslab.dev/labs/automationbench, daslab.dev/s4bench) showing its tasks, vendor schemas, and a leaderboard — scrubbable and scored.

Vendor types declare extends: ["email/mailbox"] etc. — tools that consume canonical types work uniformly across all vendors that implement them.

Live gallery →

Install

npm install scenecast

Use

import { Email } from "scenecast";

const inboxState = { messages: await fetchInbox() };  // any vendor — Gmail, Outlook, IMAP, …

// Visual — drop into any HTML surface
document.querySelector("#inbox")!.innerHTML =
  Email.defaultView.toHTML(inboxState, { size: "medium" });

// Headless — feed your agent compact, structured context
const ctx = Email.defaultView.toMarkdown(inboxState, { size: "medium" });
//   "Inbox (5 messages, 3 unread)
//
//    - **Invoice #4421 — overdue** — from alice@vendor.com · unread
//    - **Quick question about Q2 plan** — from ceo@company.com · unread
//    - …"

await llm.chat({ messages: [{ role: "user", content: ctx }, ...] });

Why this exists

Today most agents do one of two things with their world state, and both are bad:

1. Dump raw JSON into the context — wastes tokens, hurts comprehension, makes long-running agents expensive
2. Hand-write a custom summarizer per app — every team rebuilds Gmail-summarize, Salesforce-summarize, Stripe-summarize, … — none consistent, none shared

scenecast gives you one definition, three rendering targets, ten apps batteries-included. Lazy users get good defaults. Power users override per view.

API

defineAsset({ type, schema, defaultView, … })

import { defineAsset, defineView } from "scenecast";

const Gmail = defineAsset({
  type:        "gmail/account",
  schema:      gmailSchema,        // JSON Schema for the asset's state
  defaultView: GmailInboxView,     // see below
  views:       { drafts: GmailDraftsView },
  secretFields: ["access_token"],
  mockState:   () => ({ messages: [...] }),  // for tests + galleries
});

defineView({ name, toHTML, toMarkdown, toText? })

const GmailInboxView = defineView<GmailState>({
  name: "GmailInbox",
  toHTML(state) {
    return `<div>… HTML …</div>`;
  },
  toMarkdown(state) {
    const unread = state.messages.filter(m => !m.is_read).length;
    return `Inbox (${state.messages.length} msgs, ${unread} unread)\n\n` +
      state.messages.map(m => `- **${m.subject}** — from ${m.from_}`).join("\n");
  },
  // toText defaults to stripping HTML tags if not provided
});

View primitives

Most asset views compose a small library of generic primitives:

import { primitives } from "scenecast";

const { TableView, MetricView, ListView, KeyValueView,
        CalendarView, StatusView, DocumentView, ImageView, PlanView } = primitives;

TableView.toHTML({
  title:   "Open opportunities",
  columns: ["Name", "Amount", "Stage"],
  rows:    [{ Name: "Meridian", Amount: "$245k", Stage: "Won" }, …],
});

Each primitive ships HTML + Markdown out of the box.

Pairs with scene-otel

When emitting trace events with scene-otel, pass the asset directly — the schema becomes the type contract for the snapshot, and the default view powers the scrubber's rendering automatically:

import { Gmail } from "scenecast";
import { scene } from "scene-otel";

scene.set(Gmail.type, world.gmail);              // schema-validated emit

The scene-otel scrubber auto-detects registered scenecast assets and renders cards with the asset's default view.

Schemas

The 49 JSON Schemas exported from Zapier's AutomationBench (covering 49 SaaS apps) are available under schemas/automationbench/ for use as your asset shapes. The 10 batteries-included assets here use that catalogue as their seed.

Roadmap

v0.1.0 (current)

• ✅ defineAsset + defineView core
• ✅ Multi-format render: HTML + Markdown + Text
• ✅ View primitives library: Table, Metric, List, KeyValue, Calendar, Status, Document, Image, Plan
• ✅ 10 batteries-included assets with mock state
• ✅ Live gallery showing every asset in both formats

Coming next

• Image-format render — Satori-based PNG rendering for vision-capable models
• Action handlers — views declare actions: { approve, redo, send }; runtime routes scene action events
• defineCheck — LLM-judged predicates as a sibling primitive (composable into milestones)
• AutomationBench bridge — auto-translate AB's assertions to milestones; visualize first-unsatisfiable-step
• More assets — HubSpot, Asana, Trello, Zoom, Linear, …

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Related

• scene-otel — wire format for snapshotting agent state to OTel events. Pairs naturally — scenecast renders what scene-otel snapshots.
• scenebench — open harness for running, measuring, and visualizing agent benchmarks. Vendor types are authored with scenecast.
• scenegrad — runtime goal assertions for agents. Scenecast schemas describe what is; scenegrad asserts what must be.
• agent-otel — OTel router for agent telemetry.
• autocompile — observes repeated agent runs, compiles invariant parts to code.