explainer-video-from-coursework
Turn a directory of structured coursework notes into a narrated, animated
explainer-video series.
A skill for AI coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, DeepSeek Harness and
Antigravity. Point it at a folder of course notes: it plans the series, writes
the narration, synthesizes the audio, authors the visuals, then renders and
assembles finished MP4s with YouTube-ready chapters and captions.
Its planner does not merely invent titles — it proves completeness: every
content-bearing section is assigned to a video or classified as navigation
(0 orphaned) before any expensive stage runs.
The pipeline
Stage 0 (/inputs) collects the two things only you can decide — the source
notes directory, and where the finished videos land.
| # | stage | what it does | cost |
|---|
| 1 | /plan | decompose the notes, prove coverage | free, local |
| 2 | /enrich | retitle and curate (skip / merge) | free, agent |
| 3 | /script | write the narration segments | free, agent |
| 4 | /audio | TTS → a measured timeline | network — spends the Gemini key |
| 5 | /scene | author the visuals (diagram / code / svg) | free, agent |
| 6 | /publish | YouTube chapters + captions | free — no TTS, no Chromium |
| 7 | /render | frames → H.264 MP4 | local CPU |
| 8 | /assemble | per-segment parts → the finished cut | local CPU |
Stages 1–2 run once for the whole directory; stages 3–8 run once per video. One
video end to end is a valid stopping point — a pilot, or a single-target run.
Install
Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video
claude plugin install explainer-video-from-coursework@akshaydev17
Codex
codex plugin marketplace add akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video
codex plugin add explainer-video-from-coursework@akshaydev17
DeepSeek Harness
dsh plugin --profile web add explainer-video-from-coursework
Antigravity
agy plugin install https://github.com/akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video
All four commands install the same npm package — one package, three manifest surfaces,
one copy of the nine skills. How each platform reads it, and how to publish, is in
DISTRIBUTION.md.
Prerequisites
- Node ≥ 22 —
render.mjs relies on the built-in global WebSocket.
ffmpeg + ffprobe — H.264 encoding, muxing, and duration measurement.- Headless Chromium —
npx playwright install --with-deps --only-shell.
- A Gemini API key — for TTS. It lives in the OS secret store (macOS
Keychain · Linux
secret-tool · Windows Credential Manager) under the service
name gemini-tts — never in env, never in a plaintext file. A free key:
https://aistudio.google.com/apikey.
The tools fail loud on a missing prerequisite rather than quietly producing a
broken video. Per-OS commands and citations:
SETUP.md.
Use it
Invoke the skill with the notes directory:
/explainer-video-from-coursework path/to/your/notes/
You get one .mp4 per video, plus description.md (blurb and a paste-ready
chapter block) and captions.srt, copied to the destination you chose — by
default videos/ beside the source. Scratch stays in a gitignored
out/<name>/<NN>/.
Run every command from the project (where out/ lives), not from the skill's
install folder. The tools self-locate their own tools/, src/ and scenes/,
so only the work and scratch paths depend on the current directory.
Repository layout
plugin.json Agent Plugins manifest (Codex, Antigravity)
.claude-plugin/ plugin.json + marketplace.json (Claude Code)
.agents/plugins/ marketplace.json (Codex)
cordis.patch.yml + lib/index.js DSH bundle plugin (serves this package's skills/)
skills/explainer-video-from-coursework/ the main skill: SKILL.md, tools/, src/, scenes/, SETUP.md
skills/craft-video-<stage>/ the 8 stage skills, separately invocable
DISTRIBUTION.md publish + install commands
Docs
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
