Castcut
Local character films with ComfyUI. Cast → Outfit → Day → (Story · Scene) → Cut.
Formerly shipped as Prompt Studio / llm-prompt-studio. Package and GitHub repo are now castcut. The classic prompt and image tools, without the film loop, live on as Prompt Studio, built on the shared core package prompt-studio-core.
Make a character, give her a day, cut the film — locally, with ComfyUI. One consistent person across every still and clip.
How it works
- Cast — create a character once: a face plate, traits, a voice, her home and workplace.
- Outfit — dress her: a kit, your own photo, or shoes you pick.
- Day — plan 2–8 moments from morning to night; each becomes a still, then a clip. Give a moment a line and she says it, lip-synced, in her voice.
- Story (optional) — the LLM offers four next scenes; pick one or write your own.
- Scene (optional) — one shot, exactly as you want it: setting, beat, line, pose and camera. Render takes, ★ keep the best, then make it move.
- Cut — the film's own step: watch the cut, drag the shots into order, trim and frame them, mix Day, Story and Scenes, add music (or Score this film), subtitles, narration and titles; export vertical, square or widescreen, or for an editor.
Finishing tools on any still or clip: Sharpen & smooth (SeedVR2 + RIFE), Make more realistic (WAN 2.2 low-noise re-render), Copy moves from a video (Wan Animate 2), Direct a move (pose her through a few beats on a 3D body, then render it), Dance to music (Wan-Dancer), Lip-sync to a recording (InfiniteTalk, one or two people), Relight, and Sketch over a still.
Consistency: one face (the Cast plate), one dressed plate per outfit, and the Cast's own places — set a photo of a real room and stills set there are built around it.
Poses and camera: a 3D pose editor (drag a hand or foot, start from Stand / Sit / Kneel / Lie down / Walk, or a real pose read from a photo) and one Camera row — height, direction, shot, lens — on every Day slot, Story beat and Scene. A pose check redoes a still that missed the pose.
Docs: doodersrage.github.io/castcut — Install · Your first film · Models · Finishing tools
Get it: GitHub Releases (macOS .dmg, Windows .exe, Linux .deb / .AppImage) · docker pull ghcr.io/doodersrage/castcut:latest · how to cut a release
On Linux, prefer the .deb (system WebKit, snappier UI) — details in docs/desktop.md.
Screenshots
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| Film — pick or create a Cast lead; Outfit → Day → Cut. | Day — one character from morning to night, stills in a reel, then Cut film. |
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| Story — pick what happens next; each scene becomes a still (and a clip). | Cut — mix Day, Story and Scenes; watch it, set the shape, music and titles, then cut. |
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| Cast — the Bible tab's Appearance: sex, ethnicity, age, height, body and hair, used in every picture. | 3D pose editor — drag a hand or foot, start from a quick pose, set the camera. |
Quick start
Requires Node.js 22+ and a reachable ComfyUI.
npm install
cp .env.example .env.local # set COMFYUI_API_URL
npm run dev
Open http://localhost:47832, then:
- Settings → Overview → Heal & ready — installs the node packs and turns on the workflows.
- Settings → LLM → Built-in LLM — one click for the language + vision model (or point it at LM Studio / Ollama).
- Settings → ComfyUI → Models — install a still engine and LTX-2.5 (which models for what).
- Film → Make a starter film.
Docker: cd docker && cp .env.example .env && docker compose up -d --build — see Configuration. Day-2 ops (second GPU, new machine, users): Operator guide.
Pages
| Page | Route | What |
|---|
| Film | /play | Start or resume a film on a Cast lead |
| Cast | /characters | Characters: looks, plates, voice, places, films, seasons |
| Outfit | /fitting | Clothing, shoes, try-ons, the dressed plate |
| Day | /day | The day plan, stills, clips, Cut film |
| Story | /story | Scene-by-scene stories with stills and clips |
| Scene | /scene | One shot as you want it — takes, keep the best, make it move |
| Cut | /cut | Put the film together: order, trim, music, titles, export |
| Gallery | /gallery | Everything rendered — filters by Cast, look, checks |
| Queue | /queue | What ComfyUI is doing |
| Video · Compose · Refine · Inpaint | | Single-shot tools under More |
| Mobile Studio | /m | The same film loop on a phone |
| Settings | /settings | Heal, LLM, ComfyUI, models, users, backup |
The classic prompt and image tools (Generate, Format, Pet, Fantasy, Topics, Variations, ControlNet…) live on in Prompt Studio.
Engines
| Job | Engines |
|---|
| Stills | Qwen-Image 2.1 Turbo (default), Qwen-Image 2.1 Noct-Q / Noct-Q Fast, Qwen-Image-Edit 2511, Qwen Rapid AIO (SFW / NSFW), Bria Fibo 2.0 Edit Turbo, FLUX.2 Klein |
| Clips | LTX-2.5 (talking clips, sound), WAN 2.2 Rapid AIO, MiniMax-H3 |
| Finishing | SeedVR2, RIFE, WAN 2.2 T2V low-noise 14B, Wan Animate 2 (Copy moves, the Director), Wan-Dancer, InfiniteTalk, Qwen-Edit Relight |
| Music | ACE-Step 1.5 |
| Language / vision | Built-in llama.cpp, LM Studio, Ollama, or a hosted provider |
Optional: the Diffusers engine and cloud engines (Fal, Replicate, Grok, Gemini, Runway, Luma) for the single-shot tools.
ComfyUI integration
- Workflow takeover at queue time — docs/workflow-takeover.md
- Castcut nodes (optional checks inside the job) — docs/castcut-nodes.md
- HTTP API — docs/http-api.md (live catalog:
GET /api; health, probe, invite, SMTP)
- Architecture — docs/architecture.md
- Operator guide — docs/operator.md
- Optional Diffusers engine — castcut-diffusers (its own repo; Settings → ComfyUI → Engine for Generate & Video installs it)
- Optional cloud engines — Settings → ComfyUI → Engine for Generate & Video, behind the cloud toggle (Fal, Replicate, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Runway, Luma). Set the matching env key or a browser key, then queue (Image 1 becomes img2img when present). Fal/Replicate/Grok/Gemini/Runway/Luma can queue clips; ChatGPT is stills-only. Model datalists cover current FLUX.2 / Kling / WAN / Seedream / HiDream / Veo / Gen-4.5 / Ray presets — type a custom endpoint id if your account has access to something newer.
CLI & data scripts
npm run prompt:cli -- duo --hints "..."
npm run locations:count
npm run clothing:count
Details: docs/data-catalogs.md and docs/performance/guide.md.
Full docs (searchable): pip install -r docs/requirements-docs.txt && npm run docs:serve → http://127.0.0.1:8000
Development
Built solo. Claude (Cursor / Claude Code) helped mostly with tests and CI — architecture,
product direction, and the bulk of implementation are mine. Noted here upfront rather than
left for someone to dig out of the branch history.
License
MIT © 2026 Robert McDowell. Third-party model weights you download (e.g. via Hugging Face) remain under their own licenses. Day and Story's real-world reference poses are skeletons only — read from openly licensed photos (CC0, public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA), projected from the CMU Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database, or mapped from the COCO 2017 person keypoint annotations; no photo ships with the app. See the pose reference credits; the harvesters are in scripts/pose-refs. The 3D pose editor's bodies are Blender Studio's Human Base Meshes (CC0), rigged for Castcut — see public/pose-3d/LICENSE.md.
