ghost-editor skill

---
name: ghost-editor
description: "AI video editor for talking-head reels. Turns a raw phone recording of someone talking to camera (retakes, pauses, false starts) into a finished vertical 1080x1920 reel for Instagram, TikTok or Shorts: the best take of each sentence, pause trimming, word-timed captions that never cover the face, motion scenes on the spoken word, sound effects mixed against the voice and checked B-roll. Use when the user hands over a talking-head video and says \"edit this\", \"make a reel\", \"make it look like this video\", \"add captions/sound effects\", \"pick the best takes\", \"remove the pauses\", asks for a re-cut, or names a style. Named styles (recipes/, docs/PLAYBOOK.md): Clean OS, Seoul list, RESULT, Face RESULT, stan style, vector explainer, POV montage, Whiteboard, Kinetic doc, Step Deck, Product page, Tactile paper, Caption News, News Package, Telestrator, Halftone Dossier, Swiss Grid, Data Story, Hologram HUD; plus seven presets (clean, editorial, meme, cinematic, launch, kinetic, pop). Not for landscape screen recordings."
---

# ghost-editor

One recording in, one reel out. The creative work is choosing takes and
planning beats. The scripts do everything else the same way every time: cut
math, zoom tweens, captions, SFX levels, asset copying, QA. Nothing on
screen says anything the speaker did not say. A meme is a reaction, so it
lands ON or just AFTER the punchline, never before it.

Skill dir: `~/.claude/skills/ghost-editor` (below: `$S`). A reel project is any
directory (`$P`); `build.mjs` copies what it needs into `$P/assets` so the
project renders on its own.

## Cost: one fresh helper per reel, the right model per step
Measured on a batch of 21 reels: looking at frames was ~5 % of the Claude usage. The cost is context re-read on every
turn (one helper that built 3 reels in a row re-read 212 M cached tokens over 464 turns) and new generator code written
per reel (two helpers per style each wrote their own lib). Numbers: docs/PLAYBOOK.md "Cost".
- **One reel = one FRESH helper** (Agent tool). Never one helper for several reels or a wave. The session that talks to
  the user orchestrates: fill `templates/briefs/build-one-reel.txt` (build -> preview -> stop), send them the preview,
  and on their OK fill `templates/briefs/finish-one-reel.txt` for a new helper. Changes after their notes go to a fresh
  helper with the reel's `reel.py` and their words (the generator is the state, not the old transcript); SendMessage the
  old helper only for a one-line fix. Spawn helpers as `reel-helper` when the session lists it
  (`templates/agents/reel-helper.md`, copied to ~/.claude/agents/; shell and file tools only): a general-purpose helper
  starts at ~85 k tokens of tool and skill lists and re-reads them on every call. Long jobs run in one blocking call,
  never a background job polled per turn.
- **Model per step:** Opus (the default) plans and judges: takes, hook, beats, components, `reel.py`, snapshots, the
  user's notes. Sonnet (Agent tool `model: "sonnet"`) runs fixed recipes: preview / final renders, `finals.py` qa /
  deliver, `components.py record`, file moves and commits. It stops on a hard QA fail and reports; the fix goes back to
  Opus. Many frames are Gemini Flash's job (broll_vision / broll_qa), not Claude's.
- **Little code per reel:** a named style's reel is a short generator on its recipe's builder (`clean-os/cleanos.py` +
  `kit.py`, `result-podcast/faceresult.py`, `whiteboard/board.py`, `seoul-list/seoul.py`); read `<builder> --api`, not
  old generators, and never write a per-batch lib. A part two reels needed goes into the builder's kit.
- **Small context:** grep / `sed -n`, not cat; one overview sheet per look (`snap.py beats` -> overview.jpg), not single
  frames; never re-read what you just wrote. Measure a reel with `scripts/reel_usage.py <helper transcripts>`.

## Pipeline