https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6dd5dc32-c975-4e0e-8cd4-2ef3ccc11e61
News
- Nov 10, 2026: explainroo 0.6 records your real app with
explainroo record, and a scene plays that recording with a pointer and zooms that land on the narration. New projects start in the studio look, and formats give one kind of video a ready shape. check and verify work on any video file, and cut edits your own recording by its words. The list of sizes moved to explainroo sizes.
- Nov 9, 2026: explainroo 0.5 runs with npx, so you don't have to clone it. It can also use outside services on your own key, like AI video clips and posting to your channels. German narration works with a paid voice or your own recording. A project made before keeps its look, frame for frame, until you add
"defaults": "0.5" to its video.json, which brings the new look, like bigger arrow labels.
- Oct 20, 2026: explainroo 0.4.1 keeps arrow and chart labels whole while a shot holds.
- Oct 15, 2026: explainroo 0.4 films each scene with a camera that follows the narration.
- Oct 13, 2026: explainroo 0.3 narrates in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, and adds the editorial look.
- Oct 13, 2026: explainroo 0.2 adds five more languages, other voices and video clips.
All news is on explainroo.com/news.
Make a video
[!TIP]
Tell your coding agent to use explainroo, and what the video should explain.
It works with Claude Code, Codex, Pi and other coding agents. Right now it
works best with Claude Code and Opus 5.5.
Copy this into your agent and put your topic in place of the brackets:
Make me a short explainer video about [your topic].
Use explainroo for it: run npx --yes explainroo docs and follow what it prints.
The agent sets up explainroo, makes the video and checks it. You get an MP4
file.
How does it work?
An explainer video is a short video where a voice explains a topic and
drawings appear while it speaks. For explainroo, the agent writes two files.
script.md has the words the voice says. scenes.js draws the pictures with
a bit of JavaScript, and each drawing can appear on a word from the script.
explainroo does the rest:
- Voice. Kokoro, an open
voice model, reads the script aloud in English, Spanish, French, Italian,
Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese. It has 54 voices
and needs no account or API key. You can also use an
ElevenLabs or Cartesia voice,
or record the narration yourself. German works with one of these, because
Kokoro has no German voice. One project can make the same video in several
languages, with a script for each.
- Timing. Whisper listens to the
narration and notes when each word is spoken.
- Pictures. Chrome runs in the background and draws the frames. The lines
can look hand drawn (Rough.js), and there are 1,800
icons from Lucide. A scene can also show charts, math
formulas, code that changes step by step, your own screenshots and video
clips such as screen recordings.
- Camera. A camera films each scene. It moves in on what the voice talks
about when there is time, and pulls back at the end so the last frame shows
the whole idea. Cards and labels are never cut in half while a shot holds.
Things arrive with a little spring, and the final video has motion blur,
like a film camera.
- Sound. explainroo makes its own background music for each video and
adds small sound effects. The music gets quieter while the voice speaks.
- File. ffmpeg puts it all together into an MP4, with subtitle files,
YouTube chapters and a cover image.
An agent can't watch a video, so explainroo gives it other ways to check its
work. It saves stills of the scenes and a sheet of small frames for the whole
video. A layout check finds text that is cut off or overlaps, and a speech
check finds words the voice got wrong. For a feed-sized player,
explainroo check videos/<name> --view-width 854 also flags small text.
Check or cut any video
check and verify also take a video file made with any tool:
npx --yes explainroo check talk.mp4 --script script.txt
They report:
- black or blank frames, and stretches where the picture stands still
- silence, the loudness and the true peak
- text too small to read on a phone, found in frames of the video
- with
--script, the words of your script that the speech model didn't hear
--json gives the same report for your agent.
explainroo cut talk.mp4 edits your own recording by its words. It writes
talk.cut.md, one sentence a line with the time of each word. Your agent
deletes words and long pauses there. Then explainroo cut talk.mp4 --apply
writes talk.cut.mp4, with a short crossfade at every join so the cuts don't
click. Both run on your computer, like the rest of explainroo.
What leaves your computer
Making a video needs no account and no key, and it costs nothing. The voice,
the timing, the music and the rendering run on your computer. Your coding agent
is a separate service with its own terms and prices.
Some commands send something to an outside service, and only when you or your
agent run them:
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
