RepoReel

Paste a public GitHub repo URL. Get a narrated explainer video. No accounts.

Live: https://reporeel-marlandoj.zocomputer.io

Built solo in 48 hours for Hackyard Yard #1 — theme: "No accounts."

What it does

Give RepoReel any public GitHub repository (or pull request) URL and it produces a ~60 second narrated explainer video, on the spot:

1. Ingest — pulls the repo's real metadata, README, languages, and commit history from the GitHub API. For PRs: the diff stats and changed files.
2. Script — an LLM turns those facts into a 6-scene video script with on-screen copy and a continuous voiceover, grounded in the fetched data.
3. Voice — narration is synthesized locally with Kokoro-82M (no cloud TTS).
4. Render — the scenes are compiled into a HyperFrames HTML composition (GSAP timeline, per-scene audio) and rendered headlessly to MP4.

The finished reel lives at a shareable /v/:id link and can be downloaded as a plain MP4. Typical end-to-end time: about 90 seconds.

Theme fit: no accounts, honestly

• No sign-up, no login, no email — not for making videos, not for watching them, not for downloading them.
• No cookies, no tracking, no user identity of any kind. The server keeps a job queue and nothing about you.
• Abuse control without identity: per-IP rate limiting (3 new videos/hour), a bounded queue, and URL-level caching so popular repos render once.

Why this exists (a Hackyard story)

Every Yard submission is strongly encouraged to include a demo video. RepoReel makes explainer videos for repos — including the other 49 submissions in this Yard. Paste a competitor's repo, get their explainer. You're welcome.

Running it yourself

Requirements: Bun, ffmpeg, and Chrome/Chromium (HyperFrames downloads a headless build on first render).

bun install
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your_key_here bun src/server.ts

Optional environment:

Variable	Purpose	Default
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	LLM script generation (required)	—
GITHUB_TOKEN	higher GitHub API limits (falls back to gh auth token, then anonymous)	—
PORT	listen port	3901
REPOREEL_RATE_LIMIT	new videos per IP per hour	3
REPOREEL_MAX_QUEUE	max active jobs	6
RENDER_DISABLED	kill switch: reject new jobs	off

One-off CLI render, no server:

bun src/cli.ts https://github.com/owner/repo

Architecture

Hono (Bun) server ── SQLite job queue ── serial worker
                                            │
              GitHub API → StoryFacts JSON  │  src/lib/github.ts
              OpenRouter → 6-scene script   │  src/lib/script.ts
              Kokoro-82M → per-scene WAVs   │  src/lib/tts.ts
              scene JSON → HyperFrames HTML │  src/lib/compose.ts
              headless Chrome → MP4         │  src/lib/render.ts

Everything is a plain file on disk under data/jobs/<id>/ — the facts, the script, the audio, the composition HTML, and the final MP4. Delete the directory and the reel never existed.

Model declaration

Built with Claude (Fable 5) as the coding agent. At runtime, video scripts are generated via OpenRouter (Claude Sonnet 4.5, with Gemini 2.5 Flash and GPT-4o-mini as fallbacks). Voiceover is local Kokoro-82M. All code in this repository was written during the Yard #1 build window (2026-08-28 18:00 → 2026-08-30 18:00 UTC).

License

MIT