opus-video-skills
Two Claude Code skills for videos made entirely in code: hand-painted watercolour animation and kinetic typography reels
- 380 ★ on the repository
- Last commit
Extended access
Why this level
- The skill runs a browser and a video encoder on your machine and writes many files into the project folder
- On manual setup npm installs the project template's dependencies from an external registry
Install
- Works in
In your terminal, with SkillFoxx CLI
npx skillfoxx add skills/opus-video-skillsDetects the agents on your machine, shows the access level and pins the version.
Other ways to install
Access and checks
How we reviewExtended accessThe tool runs code or makes network calls and only reads external data.
- The skill runs a browser and a video encoder on your machine and writes many files into the project folder
- On manual setup npm installs the project template's dependencies from an external registry
This is third-party code. Review the repository files before installing.
What it does
opus-video-skills bundles Claude Code skills that each make a video in its own style. painted-animation draws a watercolour and ink cartoon with p5.js and p5.brush: music clips, lyric videos with word-by-word subtitles, animated shorts. kinetic-reel makes kinetic typography reels with WebGL layers on three.js and music synthesized from the same timeline. Both skills work the same way. Each frame is computed as a function of time, rendered in headless Chrome and encoded to MP4 through ffmpeg. Code creates the imagery and music, with no generative models involved. The skill scaffolds a project, shows a storyboard, builds and reviews every shot and writes the final file to the project's out folder. The repository includes examples: a 31-second lyric video and an 84-second work reel.
Who it is for. For designers, motion developers and content makers who want short videos from a text description and code, with no graphic editors.
Good fit when
- You need a short watercolour-style cartoon with a character, for example "Clawd tries to catch a butterfly in 15 seconds"
- You need a lyric video for a song with highlighted words, and you have an audio file and an LRC timing file
- You want a project showreel from a résumé: kinetic typography, 3D layers and rhythm to music
- You want an MP4 where every frame is reproducible and editable in code, with no manual editing
- You want to extend or recut the Work Reel ’26 example from the repository
Not a fit when
- You need live-action footage or photorealism: the skills only draw graphics in code
- You do not have Claude Opus 5.5: the authors built and tested the skills on that model only
- You need a video in a couple of minutes: a build includes storyboarding, shot-by-shot review and rendering
Example request
Make a 15-second video of Clawd trying to catch a butterfly in a watercolour animation styleLimitations
The authors tested the skills only in Claude Code on Claude Opus 5.5. Rendering every frame in headless Chrome and then encoding takes noticeable time, especially for long videos. The repository text states an MIT license, but GitHub does not recognise it. The painted-animation engine is based on John Heibel's ClaudeAnimationBase, also under MIT. If you installed painted-animation by cloning under the old scheme, remove it and install it again.
How to disable. Run `/plugin uninstall painted-animation@opus-video-skills` and the same for kinetic-reel. If you installed with symlinks, remove the links from ~/.claude/skills and the ~/opus-video-skills folder.
FAQ
How do I install opus-video-skills in Claude Code?
Run `/plugin marketplace add tuzhechen2005/opus-video-skills`, then `/plugin install painted-animation@opus-video-skills` and `/plugin install kinetic-reel@opus-video-skills`. Install either skill or both. By hand, skills install by cloning and symlinking into ~/.claude/skills.
How is painted-animation different from kinetic-reel?
painted-animation draws a watercolour and ink cartoon with a character and suits shorts, music videos and lyric videos. kinetic-reel builds kinetic typography reels with WebGL 3D layers and suits showreels and promos.
Do the skills use neural networks for images and music?
No. The skills build imagery and music procedurally, with p5.js, three.js and sound synthesized from the timeline.
What must be installed on the computer?
Node.js, Google Chrome and ffmpeg. For song tempo detection in painted-animation, Python 3 with numpy also helps.
How do I make a lyric video?
Prepare the song file and an LRC lyrics file with timings. The skill measures tempo with the beat_grid.py script and cuts the video to the beat, with words highlighted karaoke-style.
Discussion
No questions or reviews yet.
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Comparison with similar tools
Entries that share the main search query, and how they differ.
| Entry | Official | Repository stars | Main difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| opus-video-skills (this entry) | no | 380 | |
| Motion Graphics Skill Pack | no | 476 | fifteen skills for launch films, charts and reels; this has two complete styles with examples and project templates |
| Animate | no | 1,066 | a skill for short animated videos in seven styles; this has a watercolour cartoon with a character and kinetic typography with synthesized music |
README in short
The page describes the two skills, a table of styles with typical uses and two install methods. Each skill has a preview sheet and a documentation link. The end covers the repository structure, how to add a new style and thanks to the original engine authors.
README badge
Original SKILL.md
##### skills/painted-animation/SKILL.md 200 --- name: painted-animation description: Make hand-painted watercolour-and-ink cartoon videos (MP4) with code — p5.js + p5.brush rendered frame by frame in headless Chrome, encoded with ffmpeg — starring Clawd or any character. Use when the user asks to make an animation, animated short, cartoon, music video, lyric video, animated GIF/loop or "a video of Clawd…", or mentions the PDoomVideo / ClaudeAnimationBase approach. Covers storyboarding, the engine API, the render-and-look review loop, music/lyric sync and splitting long videos across subagents. --- # Painted animation A method for making short cartoons entirely in code, distilled from [JohnHeibel/PDoomVideo](https://github.com/JohnHeibel/PDoomVideo) (a 156 s music video painted by Claude Opus) and its generalised kit [ClaudeAnimationBase](https://github.com/JohnHeibel/ClaudeAnimationBase) (MIT), which is bundled here as `template/`. **How it works:** every frame is a pure function of time `t`. `studio.html` loads p5.js + p5.brush and your scene files; each shot paints the whole 1920×1080 frame with watercolour fills and boiling ink lines. `render.mjs` drives headless Chrome to render contact sheets for review, or every frame in parallel, and ffmpeg encodes the MP4 (with audio if given). ## Workflow ### 0. Scaffold ```bash bash ~/.claude/skills/painted-animation/scripts/new_project.sh <project-dir> # add --keep-demo to keep the example scene hooked up ``` This copies the template, unhooks the demo scene, runs `npm install` and checks node / ffmpeg / Chrome. Then **read `<project-dir>/ANIMATION_GUIDE.md` in full** before designing anything: it holds the rules, the animation principles and the complete engine / Clawd API. Look at `docs/emotions.jpg` and `docs/views.jpg` (the model sheets) with the Read tool. For a music video or anything longer than ~20 s, also read [references/music-video.md](references/music-video.md). For a lyric video, ask for the song file and an LRC first, and measure the tempo with `scripts/beat_grid.py`: lines are usually faster than you'd guess. ### 1. Storyboard before code Write `STORYBOARD.md` in the project (format in the guide: logline, world + palette arc, motif, the character's emotion arc, then shots with **reads** — the timed list of what the viewer must understand). Worked example: [examples/xiaozhen/](examples/xiaozhen/) (a 31 s lyric video: storyboard and full scene code). Show the storyboard to the user and let them react before building, unless they said to just go ahead. ### 2. Build shot by shot - Set `duration`, `bpm`, `offset` (and `audio`) in `src/config.js`. - One IIFE-wrapped file per scene/chapter in `src/scenes/`, ending with `shots([[t0, fn], ...])`; add its `<script>` to `studio.html`. - Block key poses first, check them as stills, then add the motion between them. ### 3. Render and look — every shot, several times You can't see motion by reading code. From the project dir: