hyperframes/README.md

Write HTML. Render video. Built for agents.

Quickstart | Showcase | Playground | Catalog | Docs | Discord

HyperFrames is an open-source framework for turning HTML, CSS, media, and seekable animations into deterministic MP4 videos. Use it locally with the CLI, from AI coding agents with skills, or as the rendering core behind hosted authoring workflows.

Quick Start

With an AI coding agent

Install the HyperFrames skills, then describe the video you want:

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --full-depth

The picker opens with nothing pre-selected — the Core Skills group is all you need: the /hyperframes router installs each creation workflow on demand. Agents and non-interactive runs should use npx hyperframes skills update instead — it installs exactly the core set, whereas a non-interactive skills add without --skill installs all 19.

--full-depth does a full clone of the repo's current main. Without it, skills add fetches the skills.sh registry blob, which lags main by hours — you'd get an older copy of a skill. (hyperframes skills update already installs full-depth.)

Try a prompt like:

Using /hyperframes, create a 10-second product intro with a fade-in title, a background video, and subtle background music.

The skills teach agents the HyperFrames production loop: plan the video, write valid HTML, wire seekable animations, add media, lint, preview, and render. They work with Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Codex, and other coding agents that support skills.

Skills

HyperFrames ships 19 skills agents load on demand. Read /hyperframes first — it's the router and capability map; it picks a workflow for any "make me a…" request — video, deck, or composition port — and points to the domain skills below.

Default to the core set — the router installs each creation workflow on demand. npx hyperframes skills update installs exactly that from anywhere; the interactive picker (npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --full-depth) lists it as the "Core Skills" group, nothing pre-selected. The picker is interactive-only — a non-interactive or agent run without --skill installs all 19. Use npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --all --full-depth to install all 19 deliberately (skips the picker), or npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --skill <name> --full-depth for just one (bare name, no leading /). Keep --full-depth — it installs the current main; without it skills add fetches the skills.sh blob, which lags by hours.

Installs stay lean after that: npx hyperframes init keeps the core set fresh (the router, the hyperframes-* domain skills, and media-use — plus whatever is already installed; /figma stays on demand) and never expands a partial install; the creation workflows install on demand — the router runs npx hyperframes skills update <workflow> before entering one. Nothing re-pulls the full set behind your back.

Upload to Codex

Build the upload-ready Codex plugin archive from the committed HEAD version of the manifest, brand assets, and skills:

bun run package:codex-plugin

This writes dist/hyperframes-plugin.zip with a hyperframes/ root folder and fails if the archive exceeds Codex's 100 MB upload limit.

Router

Skill	Use when
/hyperframes	Read first for any request to make / create / edit / animate / render a video, animation, or motion graphic. Capability map for the domain skills, the intent layer that confirms every creation brief up front, and intent router for the creation workflows below.

Creation workflows

Skill	Use when
/product-launch-video	Any website — marketing / launching / promoting a product (from its URL, a brief, or a script), or a site tour / showcase / social clip featuring the site's own visuals. Up to ~3 min (sweet spot 30-90s).
/faceless-explainer	Explaining a topic / concept from arbitrary text — no product, no URL, no website capture; every visual is LLM-invented (typography / abstract / diagram / data-viz).
/pr-to-video	A GitHub pull request (PR URL, owner/repo#N ref, or "this PR") → changelog / feature-reveal / fix / refactor explainer, read via the gh CLI.
/embedded-captions	Adding captions / subtitles to an existing talking-head video (footage untouched) — verbatim rail, embedded climax behind the subject, or pure-cinematic embed.
/talking-head-recut	Packaging an existing talking-head / interview / podcast video with designed graphic overlays — lower-thirds, data callouts, kinetic titles, pull-quotes, side panels, PiP.
/motion-graphics	A short, unnarrated, design-led motion graphic (~under 10s) — kinetic type, stat / chart hit, logo sting, lower-third, animated tweet / headline. MP4 or transparent overlay.
/music-to-video	A music track (audio file, video to pull audio from, or one generated from a mood brief) → a beat-synced video — lyric, slideshow, or kinetic promo; music drives pacing.
/slideshow	A presentation / pitch deck / interactive deck — discrete slides, fragment reveals, branching, hotspot navigation, presenter mode. Output is a navigable deck, not a rendered video.
/general-video	Anything else — longer or multi-scene pieces, brand / sizzle reel, title card, static loop, freeform composition. Input- and length-agnostic fallback, and the home of companion mode (co-create with the full toolbox).
/remotion-to-hyperframes	Porting an existing Remotion (React) composition's source to HyperFrames HTML. One-way migration, not creation.

Domain skills (loaded on demand)

Atomic capabilities the creation workflows compose against — pull one when you need that specific layer.

Skill	Covers
/hyperframes-core	The composition contract — data-* timing attributes, class="clip", tracks, sub-compositions, variables, framework-owned media playback, determinism rules.
/hyperframes-animation	All animation knowledge — atomic motion rules, scene blueprints, transitions, runtime adapters (GSAP / Lottie / Three.js / Anime.js / CSS / WAAPI / TypeGPU).
/hyperframes-keyframes	Seek-safe keyframe authoring across runtimes — GSAP timelines, CSS keyframes, Anime.js, WAAPI, FLIP, paths, masks, SVG morph/draw, 3D depth — plus hyperframes keyframes diagnostics for rendered motion.
/hyperframes-creative	Non-animation creative direction — frame.md / design.md, palettes, typography, narration, beat planning, audio-reactive visuals, composition patterns.
/media-use	The media OS — resolve any media need (BGM, SFX, image, icon, logo, voice, color grade, LUT) into a frozen local file or paste-ready block + ledger record, generate via TTS/music/image models when the catalog misses, transcribe, caption, remove backgrounds, and reuse assets across projects. One shared audio engine + manifest tracking.
/hyperframes-cli	CLI dev loop — init, lint, check, snapshot, preview, render, publish, doctor, plus HeyGen-hosted cloud rendering (cloud render) and AWS Lambda rendering (lambda deploy / render / progress).
/hyperframes-registry	Install and wire registry blocks and components into compositions via hyperframes add. Authoring a new block or component to contribute upstream.
/figma	Import Figma assets, tokens, components, and storyboard sections → reconstructed motion (frames read as states, not slides) (REST/CLI) plus Motion animations (MCP) and shaders (MCP source / native export) into a composition.

For visual design handoff workflows, see the Claude Design guide and Open Design guide.

Manually with the CLI

npx hyperframes init my-video
cd my-video
npx hyperframes preview      # preview in browser with live reload
npx hyperframes render       # render to MP4

Requirements: Node.js 22+, FFmpeg

What You Can Build

Need ideas? Browse the Showcase for finished videos you can watch, read, run, and remix.

• Product launch videos and feature announcements
• PR walkthroughs with animated code diffs, narration, and captions
• Data visualizations, chart races, and map animations
• Social videos with kinetic captions, overlays, and music
• Docs-to-video, PDF-to-video, and site-tour explainers
• Reusable motion graphics for automated content pipelines

Frame.md

frame.md — your design system, ready for video.

Every brand has a design.md. None of them were written for a camera. frame.md is the missing translation layer: it takes your web-context design spec and inverts it for the frame — the same tokens, the same rules, but rewritten so an AI agent can compose a promo video without guessing at scale or reaching for web chrome.

The output is a DESIGN.md superset your whole toolchain can read. Atoms stay sacred. Composition stays free. Numbers come from the script.

Biennale Yellow	BlockFrame
Blue Professional	Bold Poster
Broadside	Capsule
Cartesian	Cobalt Grid
Coral	Creative Mode

Browse and remix them all at hyperframes.dev/design.

How It Works

Define a video as HTML. Add data attributes for timing and tracks. Use GSAP, CSS, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or your own frame adapter for seekable animation.

<div id="stage" data-composition-id="launch" data-start="0" data-width="1920" data-height="1080">
  <video
    class="clip"
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="0"
    src="intro.mp4"
    muted
    playsinline
  ></video>

  <h1 id="title" class="clip" data-start="1" data-duration="4" data-track-index="1">Launch day</h1>

  <audio
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="2"
    data-volume="0.5"
    src="music.wav"
  ></audio>

  <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/gsap@3/dist/gsap.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    const tl = gsap.timeline({ paused: true });
    tl.from("#title", { opacity: 0, y: 40, duration: 0.8 }, 1);
    window.__timelines = window.__timelines || {};
    window.__timelines.launch = tl;
  </script>
</div>

Preview instantly in the browser. Render locally or in Docker. The renderer seeks each frame in headless Chrome and encodes the result with FFmpeg, so the same input produces the same video.

HyperFrames Stack

HyperFrames is the open-source rendering engine, plus a growing set of tools around HTML-native video creation.

Piece	Status	What it does
CLI	Available	Scaffold, preview, lint, inspect, and render local video projects
Core / Engine / Producer	Available	Parse compositions, drive headless Chrome, encode video, and mix audio
Catalog	Available	Reusable blocks and components for transitions, overlays, captions, charts, maps, and effects
Agent skills	Available	Teach coding agents the video-production patterns that generic web docs miss
Studio	Available, evolving	Browser surface for previewing and editing compositions
AWS Lambda rendering	Available	Deploy a distributed render stack and drive renders from your laptop or CI
hyperframes.dev	Available	Community playground for previewing, iterating, sharing, and rendering HTML-native video projects
frame.md	Available	Invert your design system for the camera — a DESIGN.md superset an agent can compose video from

Catalog

Install ready-to-use blocks and components:

npx hyperframes add flash-through-white   # shader transition
npx hyperframes add instagram-follow      # social overlay
npx hyperframes add data-chart            # animated chart

Browse the catalog at hyperframes.heygen.com/catalog.

Why HyperFrames?

• HTML-native: compositions are HTML files with data attributes. No React requirement, no proprietary timeline format.
• Agent-friendly: agents already write HTML, and the CLI is non-interactive by default.
• Deterministic: same input, same frames, same output. Built for CI, regression tests, and automated rendering.
• No build step: an index.html composition plays as-is and can be previewed directly in the browser.
• Adapter-based animation: bring GSAP, CSS animations, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or a custom runtime.
• Open source: Apache 2.0 license, with no per-render fees or commercial-use thresholds.

HyperFrames vs Remotion

HyperFrames is inspired by Remotion. Both tools render video with headless Chrome and FFmpeg. The main difference is the authoring model: Remotion's bet is React components; HyperFrames' bet is plain HTML that humans and agents can both write easily.

	HyperFrames	Remotion
Authoring	HTML + CSS + seekable animation	React components
Build step	None; index.html plays as-is	Bundler required
Agent handoff	Plain HTML files	JSX / React project
Library-clock animations	Seekable, frame-accurate via adapters	Wall-clock animation patterns need care
Distributed rendering	Local and AWS Lambda render paths	Remotion Lambda, mature cloud renderer
License	Apache 2.0	Source-available Remotion License

Read the full comparison in the HyperFrames vs Remotion guide.

Documentation

Full documentation: hyperframes.heygen.com/introduction

• Quickstart
• Showcase
• Guides
• API Reference
• Catalog
• Examples
• AWS Lambda rendering

Packages

Package	Description
hyperframes	CLI for creating, previewing, linting, and rendering compositions
@hyperframes/core	Types, parsers, generators, linter, runtime, and frame adapters
@hyperframes/engine	Seekable page-to-video capture engine using Puppeteer and FFmpeg
@hyperframes/producer	Full rendering pipeline for capture, encode, and audio mix
@hyperframes/studio	Browser-based composition editor UI
@hyperframes/player	Embeddable <hyperframes-player> web component
@hyperframes/shader-transitions	WebGL shader transitions for compositions
@hyperframes/aws-lambda	AWS Lambda SDK and deployment surface for distributed renders

Community

HyperFrames is used in production at HeyGen, with community examples from teams like tldraw, TanStack, and others in ADOPTERS.md. Open a PR if your team is using HyperFrames.

• Questions and ideas: Discord
• Bugs and feature requests: GitHub Issues
• Security reports: SECURITY.md
• Contributions: CONTRIBUTING.md

Development Note

The repo uses Git LFS for golden regression-test baselines under packages/producer/tests/**/output.mp4 (about 240 MB of .mp4 files). If you're cloning the full repo for development, install Git LFS first:

# macOS
brew install git-lfs

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install git-lfs

# Windows
winget install GitHub.GitLFS

# Then, once per machine
git lfs install

If you only need source files, you can skip LFS content:

GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes.git

License

Apache 2.0