Two videos for one fictional brand, Fern and Field, each directed end to end by the plugin from the same brand file. The second had to look different from the first because the brand's style ledger said so. The GIFs are silent previews; the MP4s with sound, and every stage behind them, live in examples/fern-and-field.
Install it with two commands inside Claude Code. In Claude Cowork, add it from the plugins screen instead.
/plugin marketplace add derrtaderr/brand-video-director
/plugin install video-direction@video-direction
You can one-shot-prompt a brand video in a minute, and it will look like every other
one-shot-prompted video, because nothing forced a look decision. This plugin is the
director's seat you skipped. It runs a staged studio process (treatment, style, boards,
styleframes, build, QC) with a gate at each stage, so the look, timing, and sound are
decisions on the record instead of the model's statistical average. It directs;
HyperFrames renders.
Motion is demanded, not hoped for. Every beat names its camera move, entrance, state
change and transition from a motion vocabulary; a motion critic measures the composition
before it renders and fails it under the archetype's floor; and each new video has to reach
for moves the brand has not used in its last two. The result is videos that read as
designed rather than assembled.
Behind the cut
Each frame below is a decision the process forced before the final render.
The style ledger then pushed the second video away from the first on every axis they
share: captions instead of a voice, panels that hold while the content moves instead of a
traveling camera, and the accent tracing a path instead of marking a word. Read the ledger
at examples/fern-and-field/style-ledger.md.
Install
Run the two commands at the top of this page inside Claude Code, or add it from the plugins screen in Claude Cowork.
Working from a local clone instead? Point the first command at the folder:
/plugin marketplace add /path/to/video-direction-plugin
The install copies everything into your own Claude config, so it keeps working even
if you delete the downloaded folder. It runs entirely on your machine and your Claude
subscription.
Your first video in 3 steps
- Run
/brand-init. A short taste-by-comparison interview — mostly A/B picks (world,
type, accent, audio, delivery), about 15 minutes — writes your motion-brand.md and
renders one proof styleframe in your new brand so you see "that's MY brand" before you
make a real video. (Prefer to do it by hand? Copy templates/motion-brand-template.md
to motion-brand.md and fill it in.) It is the source of truth for every video.
- Ask for a video in plain language — "make a launch film for X," pointing at real
content (a page, a README, a post). The
video-direction skill runs treatment →
style → boards → styleframes and presents a styleframe A/B pair.
- Pick A or B. It builds, runs the critics, renders, and hands you the MP4 path
plus a QC summary.
Audio (optional)
Videos render silent by default, with a one-line note on the render telling you how to
score it. The plugin never blocks a render to go source a track, and never ships silence
by accident without saying so. Two ways to add sound:
- Drop a track into the piece. Put any audio file in the piece's
video-work/<slug>/composition/audio/ and it scores the render. No key, no account.
- Generate sound locally, no key needed. HyperFrames ships optional local models for
voice (
npx hyperframes tts, Kokoro) and background music (MusicGen). npx hyperframes doctor lists both; they light up once the local dependencies are installed. Free, and
nothing leaves your machine.
- Bring your own ElevenLabs key (the studio upgrade). Set
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY in your
environment and the skill generates studio voiceover or scored music for you, masters it
to broadcast loudness, and drops it into the piece before the render. It runs locally in
your own session against your own key. The key is never bundled with this plugin, never
read from a file, and never sent anywhere but ElevenLabs. No key set means this tier
stays off and the free local path is the default. Any other provider works the manual
way too, generate the track yourself and save it into composition/audio/.
The house rule — no video ships silent by accident — is taught, not enforced: your
motion-brand.md Audio section wins. If it permits silent, a silent render is correct.
Next: set your audio default in /brand-init (the Audio question), then ask for a video.
Coming back / editing your brand
Once your motion-brand.md exists you don't re-run setup to make more videos — just ask
for one in plain language. The video-direction skill detects the brand file, skips
straight to the treatment, and reads your style-ledger.md (/brand-init writes it
beside the brand file; the skill appends a row per shipped video) so video 2 varies the
variant axes and never repeats video 1's look.
To change the brand itself, re-run /brand-init. With a brand file already present it
never silently overwrites: it offers a targeted edit (re-ask just one section —
constants, roster, selection, audio, or delivery) or a full regenerate, and regenerate
only proceeds after you type the word regenerate to confirm.
Next: ask for your next video, or run /brand-init and pick edit to adjust one section.
Prerequisites
- Claude Code or Claude Cowork. It installs and runs in either, from the brand interview through a full rendered video, tested on each from a separate user account.
- Node 22+.
- ffmpeg (renders composite audio and video).
- HyperFrames — the rendering framework. Nothing to install ahead of time; it is
fetched on demand via
npx hyperframes ….
Preflight: run npx hyperframes doctor once before your first render. It checks
Chrome, ffmpeg, and Node and names the exact fix for anything missing. The first npx
call may pause ~30s while it fetches — that is normal, not a hang. If that very first
fetch errors instead (e.g. a transient npm ETARGET), just re-run the command — a
cold-cache flake, not a broken install.
With that green, run /brand-init to build your brand and make your first video.
Running the tests
From the plugin root, node --test 'skills/video-direction/scripts/**/*.test.mjs' 'tests/*.test.mjs' runs the skill's scripts and the README contract.
Status
Early, but the core loop works. The video-direction skill (the studio process) and
/brand-init (the taste-by-comparison brand interview, ending in a proof styleframe) both
run today. Next is a film that runs three different brands through the same process, side by side.
To start now, run /brand-init.
