Produce a video

This tutorial produces one video from a written brief: you install an engine (they are opt-in, not part of the base install), create a brief, dispatch the three-stage agent pipeline with a review point between each stage, and render locally. The walk uses the HTML-first engine — the default, and the path with the plainest setup; the typed React engine is pointed to at the end.

The scenario: a short teaser for something you are working on — a product, a feature, an announcement. One message, under a minute of runtime, your own wording in every frame.

Prerequisites

• Ultra tier — Video is an Ultra surface; on Pro the view is visible with a lock (see Tiers: Pro & Ultra).
• Your agent subscription connected — the three pipeline stages are agent runs (see BYO Claude & keys). Rendering itself is local and free: no render service, no per-video fee.
• Disk and bandwidth for a one-time engine setup, including a roughly 150 MB render-browser download.
• Any assets — logo, screenshots, a reference URL — you want in the video.

Node and ffmpeg are not on this list on purpose. The engines run on Node 22 and footage preparation uses ffmpeg, and Command Center provisions both for you: if the engine install finds no Node, it fetches a pinned copy into its own tools folder and carries on; ffmpeg is fetched the first time something needs it. You can steer that at Doctor ▸ Media — status, a one-click install, and a Prefer control that points the studio at your own system copy instead. Skipping the video runtime at Doctor ▸ Components is honored: nothing is fetched behind you, and installing Node yourself works.

Step 1 — Install the engine (opt-in, one time)

Open the Video view. The engines are substantial dependencies, so each sets up on demand from a setup card that renders in place of the engine's surface until it is installed.

1. Pick the HTML-first engine in the header switcher (it is the default).
2. Read the setup card — it states exactly what one click does: install the engine's dependencies and pre-fetch the local render browser used for frame-accurate capture.
3. Click install and watch the progress on the card.

You should see: the setup card replaced by the engine's surface when the install completes. A failed browser fetch can be retried on its own without reinstalling. The HTML-first engine is Apache-2.0 licensed and installs with a plain button; the React engine's card additionally requires a license acknowledgment — relevant only if you take the alternate path at the end.

Step 2 — Create the brief

1. Create a brief with a name and your creative direction. The brief is a single free-form field — write the message, the audience, the tone, and the pacing you want, in plain prose.
2. Optionally enrich it: attach assets, reference files or URLs, and a Capture of a website the video is about.

You should see: the brief open into its staged tabs — Footage · Brief · Storyboard · Video Editor · Files · Renders · Capture · Catalog · Templates. Footage leads the rail because raw material comes before the brief built over it. The pipeline runs as three agent stages you dispatch in order, reviewing between each.

Step 3 — Stage one: Author brief (then review)

Dispatch Author brief. The first agent reads your direction plus every reference in full and rewrites the brief denser and reference-aware — the same field, tightened.

Review point: read the refined brief. It should say what you meant, more precisely. If the direction is off, edit the field or re-run — re-run this stage whenever your direction changes. Nothing downstream has been built yet, so this is the cheapest place to steer.

Step 4 — Stage two: Plan (then review the storyboard)

Dispatch Plan. The planner turns the brief into a storyboard: per-beat creative direction — mood, camera, assets, exact building-block picks and transitions — as a document.

Review point: open the Storyboard tab and read it beat by beat. This is a document you can edit before anything is built — the last cheap intervention point. Check that the beats tell your story and the assets you attached are placed where you expect.

Step 5 — Stage three: Author

Dispatch Author. The third agent installs the planned building blocks, writes the composition files, wires the animation timelines, and self-checks its output before finishing.

You should see: composition files appear under the Files tab — everything the agent wrote, inspectable as ordinary files.

Step 6 — Watch it, iterate, render

1. Open Video Editor and watch the composition. It is an interactive, scrubbable player rather than a still preview — scrub to the beat you are unsure about instead of watching the whole thing again.
2. To change something, go back to the stage that owns it — wording to the brief, scene order to the storyboard — and re-dispatch from there. The stages are the review gates; iterating through them beats hand-editing the output.
3. When it plays the way you want, render.

You should see: the render run locally through the pre-fetched browser, and the finished video collect in the Renders tab. Renders are files in your workspace — no upload happened, and no per-video fee applies.

Optional — prepare raw footage first

If your video builds on a recording — a talking-head take, a screen capture — the Footage tab inside the brief is the workbench: bring an mp4, and prepare it into a clean cut before graphics are authored over it — transcription, filler-word and dead-silence removal, trim and split on a visual timeline, color grading. The prepared clip lands in the brief's assets. This part of the studio uses ffmpeg, which the app fetches for you the first time you run it.

The other path: the typed React engine

Switch the header to the React engine for the schema-validated pipeline. The shape is the same — three staged agents with review between: a brief author enriches your draft's creative hints, a script author writes the scene-by-scene production script and picks the compositions, and a composer produces a schema-correct render proposal plus a readable walkthrough of what it intends. You review the proposal in the brief, then dispatch Produce to render or send it back with edit instructions. Renders land in History. Note the license checkbox on its setup card: Remotion is source-available and free for individuals and small companies; larger companies need their own license.

Where everything landed

Where to go deeper

• Video — the production studio — both engines, all tabs, costs and requirements in reference form
• Agent pipelines — the pipeline agents behind the three stages
• System requirements — what the install needs and what it provisions for you
• Doctor — Components and Media, where Node and ffmpeg are enabled, installed, and steered
• Tiers: Pro & Ultra — where Video sits in the subscription