# html-video

> Your coding agent writes the HTML; your laptop renders the MP4

- Category: Multimodal Generation / Video Generation
- Language: HTML
- Licence: Apache-2.0
- Repository: https://github.com/nexu-io/html-video
- Canonical page: https://ai-tldr.dev/tools/html-video/

## In short

html-video is a local studio and CLI for making short videos with a coding agent instead of a timeline editor. It sits in the Video Generation category of the Multimodal Generation tools and is open-source, written in HTML and licensed Apache-2.0. To get started: install Chromium for the renderer.

## Overview

html-video is a local studio and CLI for making short videos with a coding agent instead of a timeline editor. You describe a video — or paste an article link or a GitHub repo — and the agent picks a template, fills it with your content across multiple animated frames, and the tool records the result into a real MP4 on your own machine. The whole render happens locally: headless Chromium captures the animated HTML frame by frame and ffmpeg encodes it with libx264, so there is no cloud render step and no per-clip fee.

The project positions itself as a meta-layer over the HTML-to-video category rather than another authoring model to learn. Engines sit behind a single render(input, ctx) adapter contract; the Hyperframes engine (HTML + CSS + GSAP) is shipped and fully wired up today, while Remotion, Motion Canvas/Revideo and Manim are on the roadmap with their adapters not yet built. The README's engine table is explicit about which of those is actually runnable, and the maintainers treat it as the source of truth.

Around that sits the practical surface: 21 curated single-file HTML templates covering data visualisation, product promos, social shorts, explainers, kinetic type and transitions; a content graph that drives multi-scene storyboards with inline per-frame text editing; optional AI background music and narration mixed in at export; and auto-detection of 14 coding agents on your PATH, from Claude Code and Codex to Cursor, Gemini CLI, Aider and OpenCode. It is Apache-2.0 licensed with no seat caps or contributor agreements.

## What it does

- Local MP4 rendering — headless Chromium records the animated HTML and ffmpeg encodes it, with no cloud render and no per-render fee
- Pluggable engine architecture behind one render adapter interface; the Hyperframes engine ships working today
- 21 curated, license-clean animated templates: data viz, hero frames, cinematic looks, VFX text, logo outros and more
- Article, repo or prompt as the input — the studio fetches a pasted URL server-side and builds the video from the real content
- Multi-frame storyboards driven by a content graph, with inline per-frame text edits, reordering and re-render
- 14 coding agents auto-detected on your PATH and switchable from the studio's top bar, plus a scriptable CLI
- Optional AI soundtrack — background music and narration mixed into the MP4 at export

## Getting started

You need Node.js 20+, pnpm 9+, a recent ffmpeg and a Chromium install. If you do not have a system Chromium, install Playwright's.

1. Install Chromium for the renderer

```bash
npx playwright install chromium
```

2. Build and open the studio

   The studio opens at http://127.0.0.1:3071. From there you pick a template or describe a video, chat with your agent, edit per-frame text, add a soundtrack and export MP4.

```bash
pnpm install
pnpm -r build
node packages/cli/dist/bin.js studio
```

3. Check what the CLI can see

   doctor reports which coding agents and engines are installed; search-templates finds a starting template for an intent.

```bash
node packages/cli/dist/bin.js doctor
node packages/cli/dist/bin.js search-templates --intent "github stars race" --top 3
```

## When to use it

- Turn a blog post or release announcement into a short animated explainer without opening a video editor
- Generate a data-viz clip from numbers you already have, using an editorial chart template the agent fills in
- Produce many branded social cuts from one storyboard, re-rendering locally instead of paying per export
- Script video generation from a repo's CI using the CLI rather than the studio UI