Your coding agent’s video podcast pipeline, platform quirks included

What it does

video-podcast-maker is a SKILL.md workflow for coding agents such as Claude Code or Codex. You describe a topic in plain language, and the agent handles research, script generation, TTS narration, Remotion video composition, and FFmpeg audio mixing to output a 4K video podcast. The pipeline is tuned for five platforms—Bilibili, YouTube, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and WeChat Channels—with independent language, format, and CTA settings for each.

The interesting bit

The project bakes in surprisingly granular platform culture: Bilibili gets bold, high-density layouts and “一键三连” CTAs, while Xiaohongshu enforces 20-character titles and double-hash hashtags. The README also breaks the fourth wall with a blunt warning to humans that they—not the agent—must manually rewrite podcast.txt at least three times, because “a weak script renders into 4K garbage.”

Key highlights

• Multi-engine TTS support including Edge (free), Azure, Doubao, CosyVoice, ElevenLabs, Google Cloud, and OpenAI, plus bilingual narration and a phoneme dictionary for Chinese polyphone fixes.
• Remotion-native 4K subtitles rendered with React/CSS, chapter progress bars, and a component library (ComparisonCard, Timeline, CodeBlock, etc.) for composing rich section layouts.
• Platform-specific scaffolding: auto-generated chapter timestamps for YouTube, 9:16 vertical shorts for Douyin and WeChat Channels, and AI or Remotion thumbnail generation with aspect ratios tailored per site.
• Manual style_profiles stored in user_prefs.json to reuse palettes and typography across videos.

Caveats

• The project is explicitly “still under active development and may not be fully mature yet.”
• It requires an existing Remotion project as a foundation; it is not a standalone video renderer.
• Most TTS backends need paid API keys; only Edge TTS works out of the box without one.

Verdict

Content creators targeting Chinese social platforms or YouTube who already use coding agents will get the most value. If you do not want to hand-edit a script file or manage a Remotion + Node.js + FFmpeg toolchain, look elsewhere.