General Video

<!-- Public portability adaptation, 2026-09-26. -->

Install this skill with its sibling skills. See runtime setup and capability boundaries before executing commands. User instructions and the requested production stage take precedence over workflow defaults.

general-video — general video workflow

For a complete narrated film, a mixed-media explainer, or user scene/audio review, use /hyperframes' studio pipeline and review-driven-production.md. This freeform route remains useful for custom pieces; it must not bypass narration timing, versioned review, final assembly or the requested audit loops. Current explicit instructions and review choices supersede stale design files.

Confirm the route before you build. This is the fallback for custom composition authoring. If the input clearly fits a specialized workflow, prefer it: marketed product → /product-launch-video; general site → /website-to-video; topic explainer → /faceless-explainer; GitHub PR → /pr-to-video; existing footage → /embedded-captions · /talking-head-recut; short unnarrated motion graphic → /motion-graphics; Remotion port → /remotion-to-hyperframes. Out of scope: live / at-render-time data, NLE-style editing of a finished video, or producing footage HyperFrames can't capture. Unsure? Read /hyperframes first.

Set the installed skill path before any command below. The direct commands work in legacy projects; use the shorter npm run audio:discover / npm run fast:check aliases only after canonical HyperFrames scaffold/refresh has installed them.

HYPERFRAMES_DIR="/absolute/path/to/installed/hyperframes"

Frozen media: Every rendered BGM, SFX, image, or icon resolves to a reviewed project-local file. For audio candidates, run node "$HYPERFRAMES_DIR/scripts/audio-discover.cjs" --type bgm --query "<job>" or --type sfx; audition and rights-check one result, then use /media-use to resolve/freeze it. Discovery never approves an asset or supplies a render path.

Build exactly what was asked. A title card is a title card — not a title card + three supporting scenes + ambient music + captions. If extra scenes or elements would genuinely improve the piece, propose them; don't add them silently. For small edits (fix a color, adjust one duration, add one element), skip the planning steps and go straight to the build.

Approach

Discovery — open-ended requests only

For vague, exploratory requests ("make something for our brand", "a cool intro") — understand intent before picking colors:

• Audience — who watches? developers / executives / general consumers?
• Platform — where does it play? social (15s) / website hero / product demo / internal?
• Priority — what matters most? motion quality / content accuracy / brand fidelity / speed?
• Variations — one best shot, or 2-3 meaningfully different options (different pacing, energy, or structure — not just color swaps)?

For specific requests ("add a title card", "fix the timing on scene 3"), skip discovery.

Step 1 — Design system → hyperframes-creative

Establish the visual identity first. Read the current brief and review decisions, then reconcile existing frame.md, design.md and DESIGN.md; file naming alone does not make an older palette authoritative. Keep semantic colors/fonts consistent while allowing deliberately approved light/dark or material registers by scene.

If no spec exists, read hyperframes-creative/references/house-style.md and hyperframes-creative/references/video-composition.md before choosing the design. Use their hierarchy, scale, layers and material guidance to serve the subject. Metadata, texture and extra elements earn their place; there is no minimum object count. A simple narration-led comparison can be correct, while an elaborate flat card layout can still fail. For a named reference or repeated correction, use hyperframes-creative/references/reference-led-direction.md before batch production.

Find the angle (vague brief, no spec): before picking colors, write ONE sentence — what does this name/word/topic evoke, and what visual world (metaphor, setting, instrument, motif) expresses it? E.g. a cybersecurity tool → vault doors / perimeter scan lines / lock tumblers; a meditation app → tide, breath, slow light bloom. Read the meaning of the subject, not just its letters; pick a concrete angle over a literal restyle. This is the cheap substitute for prompt expansion (Step 2) on single-scene pieces, where expansion is correctly skipped — and it is the difference between a designed concept and a generic logo-on-a-gradient.

<HARD-GATE>
Before writing ANY composition HTML, verify you have ALL FOUR:
1. **A visual identity** grounded in the brief and current review choices; the house-style reference is one optional vocabulary, not a mandated palette.
2. **A one-sentence concept angle** (the "find the angle" step) for anything beyond a trivial edit — not a literal restyle of the prompt words.
3. **Deliberately chosen, available fonts** with the required glyphs and rights; embed project font files where consistent rendering requires it. User typography choices take precedence.
4. **A hierarchy/density plan from `video-composition.md`** — one clear focus, purposeful layers and a visible state/attention change. Use foreground, metadata or texture where meaningful; do not add decorative content to satisfy a count.
</HARD-GATE>

Step 2 — Prompt expansion → hyperframes-creative

Run for every multi-scene composition (skip for single-scene pieces and trivial edits). Ground the request against the design spec + house style into a consistent intermediate that downstream work reads the same way. See hyperframes-creative/references/prompt-expansion.md.

Step 3 — Plan

Before writing HTML, think at a high level:

1. What — the viewer experience: narrative arc, key moments, emotional beats.
2. Structure — how many compositions, sub-comp vs inline, which tracks carry video / audio / overlays / captions. For the monolithic-single-file vs modular-sub-comp call, see hyperframes-core/references/composition-patterns.md § Two Architectures (rule of thumb: ≥3 hard scene cuts, or any reused scene → modularize; a short single-scene piece stays one file).
   • If 3+ beats depend on one relationship geography, exact revisitation, or overview→detail→return, consider a Spatial Canvas before splitting them into scenes. First record the canonical ## Spatial Canvas admission in project-root DESIGN.md with one explicit PASS or USE plus a concrete rationale; a higher-precedence imported frame.md / design.md remains brand truth but does not replace this executable admission. Read hyperframes-creative/references/spatial-canvas.md; only for USE, instantiate hyperframes/templates/SPATIAL_CANVAS.example.json as SPATIAL_CANVAS.json and hyperframes/templates/DIRECTION.md as DIRECTION.md. Adapt the scope, exact owner composition, host-local route, and excursion windows before building; keep the full route with one composition owner.
3. Rhythm — name the pattern before implementing (e.g. fast-fast-SLOW-SHADER-hold); see hyperframes-creative/references/beat-direction.md. When momentum, temporal-compression, overwhelm, or panic-rupture defines a bounded passage, read hyperframes-creative/references/fast-paced-editing.md and lock its baseline → escalation → peak → release/reorientation prose plan rather than treating “fast” as a style preset. Record its canonical PASS/USE admission and plan under ## Fast-paced passage admission in project-root DESIGN.md; a higher-precedence imported brand spec remains brand truth, while DESIGN.md owns this executable admission. After the narration clock and index.html ownership windows are exact, instantiate hyperframes/templates/FAST_PASSAGES.example.json as project-root FAST_PASSAGES.json, then run node "$HYPERFRAMES_DIR/scripts/check-fast-passages.cjs" --root . --sync-clock and node "$HYPERFRAMES_DIR/scripts/check-fast-passages.cjs" --root .. Repeat both after any timing or ownership change.
4. Timing — which clips drive duration, where transitions land, the pacing.
5. Layout — build the end state first (see below).
6. Animate — then add motion via hyperframes-animation.

Layout Before Animation

Position every element where it sits at its most visible moment — fully entered, correctly placed, not yet exiting. Write that as static HTML + CSS first. No GSAP yet.

Why: if you position elements at their animated start state (offscreen, scaled to 0, opacity 0) and tween to where you think they land, you are guessing the final layout — overlaps stay invisible until render. Build the end state first and you see and fix layout problems before adding motion.

1. Identify the hero frame for each scene — the moment the most elements are simultaneously visible. That is the layout you build.
2. Write static CSS for that frame. The content container must fill the scene with padding, not absolute offsets:

.scene-content {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  justify-content: center;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  padding: 120px 160px; /* padding positions content; fills any scene size */
  gap: 24px;
  box-sizing: border-box;
}

Never use position: absolute; top: Npx on a content container — it overflows when content is taller than the space. Reserve absolute positioning for decoratives.

⚠ The width/height: 100% above only resolves if every ancestor has a resolved height. The root <div data-composition-id> and any wrapper between it and .scene-content must be sized (position: relative; width: 1920px; height: 1080px on the root — see hyperframes-core → "Root must be sized"). Skip this and the flex container collapses to ~0, content piles into the top-left corner, and the first glyph clips at x=0 — while lint/inspect still report 0 issues. And always keep the padding (≥80px) on .scene-content: it is the title-safe margin. Never replace it with bare gap.

3. Add entrances — animate FROM offscreen/invisible TO the CSS position with gsap.from() (in sub-compositions prefer gsap.fromTo() so the start state is explicit; see hyperframes-core/references/sub-compositions.md). The CSS position is ground truth; the tween is the journey to it.
4. Exits are transition-handled — per the scene-transition rules in hyperframes-animation/transitions/, only the final scene animates elements out; between scenes the transition IS the exit.

Shared space across time: if element A exits before element B enters in the same area, both still need correct CSS positions for their respective hero frames — timeline ordering keeps them from coexisting, and the layout step catches accidental overlap. Layered glows/shadows and z-stacked depth are intentional overlap; the step is about catching unintentional collisions (two headlines on top of each other, content bleeding off-frame).

Spatial Canvas exception: the viewport still fills and clips the output frame, but its .world wrapper is intentionally oversized and may use absolute authored world coordinates. Build and judge the static end state at every manifest camera stop; safe margins, density, and caption clearance apply after the camera transform, not to offscreen world content. One camera writer owns the world transform.

For sequence/spine scope, assemble exactly one data-hf-spatial-host="<id>" in index.html for the owner's full local route. External excursion compositions are distinct sibling mounts above it and cover their full globalized at / duration windows; the persistent world remains mounted underneath. An internal excursion instead uses one direct-root native clip in the owner with the exact local window and data-hf-spatial-excursion marker. Scene scope still needs one index.html host unless the marked root is index.html.