Video Studio

Turn a list of shots into a finished film, without wasting money on bad takes

Describe each shot in JSON. vs makes the AI clips, then cuts them into one video.

Demo

Setup, costs, commands, and a sample film you can run.

Install

You need Node 24+ and ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg).

git clone https://github.com/mblode/video-studio.git
cd video-studio
npm install
npm link

Copy .env.example to .env, add your AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY from Vercel AI Gateway (default Seedance 2.5) or ARK_API_KEY from the BytePlus console (Seedance 2.0 / lighthouse), then run vs doctor.

Quickstart

Try the sample film in films/lighthouse/:

vs cast sync films/lighthouse/shots.json
vs generate  films/lighthouse/shots.json --dry-run
vs stills    films/lighthouse/stills.json
vs animatic  films/lighthouse/shots.json
vs generate  films/lighthouse/shots.json --max-cost 18
vs stitch    films/lighthouse/shots.json --xfade 0.4

Start your own with vs init films/my-film.

Characters

Describe each character once in characters.json, list them in a shot's cast, and vs cast sync writes the rest: a multi-view character sheet into stills.json, the reference into the shot, and the binding sentence that tells the model which @Image is whose face. It counts the ordinals for you, which is the part that is easy to get wrong and expensive to discover.

Sync writes literal text into shots.json and stills.json — nothing at generate time reads characters.json — so you review the diff before you spend, and vs cast sync --check fails a build that has drifted.

Spend less

• Preview for free: see the whole edit from stills before you pay for video.
• Set a budget: --max-cost stops a run that would go over.
• Never pay twice: finished or in-progress shots are not sent again.
• Keep every take: old versions stay on disk; vs use picks which one to use.

Agent skills

npx skills add mblode/video-studio -g --agent codex claude-code -y

Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other skills.sh agents. From a clone, they are already available.

License

MIT

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Crafted by Matthew Blode