Turning Claude Code into a motion-design studio with shot recipes

What it does

video-shotcraft is an agent skill that plugs into Claude Code or Codex and treats video production like a structured coding task. It provides a library of 106 shot recipe cards—each documenting purpose, timing, easing, and choreography—plus 161 motion previews and a complete Remotion template called Ink Press. The agent uses these to storyboard, capture product screenshots, animate 2.5D camera moves, and layer beat-synced sound effects into a finished promo, marketing clip, or demo video. Essentially, it replaces the vague “make a video” prompt with a repeatable production pipeline that an AI agent can actually execute.

The interesting bit

This is not a video editor for humans; it is a taste-making layer for machines. The author reverse-engineered the motion language of high-end SaaS promos—studying films from Slack, Figma, Notion, and others—and distilled them into parameterized recipes an agent can follow. That means the skill is not just generating code; it is teaching an LLM cinematic grammar so the output looks like it came from a studio rather than a slide deck.

Key highlights

• 106 shot recipe cards covering timing, easing, and known pitfalls, plus 161 searchable motion previews in an online Gallery.
• A validated, production-ready Remotion template (“Ink Press”): 36.2 seconds, 1920×1080, 30fps, with 2.5D page captures and a full cinematic SFX pass.
• Reusable Remotion components for captions, flash cuts, digit rolls, and 2.5D camera moves, along with page-asset capture scripts.
• Complete production methodology documented in SKILL.md, including storyboarding, visual QA criteria, music beat-sync rules, and sound-design guidance.
• Built, iterated, and QA’d using Claude Code itself, effectively dogfooding the same agent workflow it teaches.

Caveats

• Remotion requires a separate license that is free for individuals and small teams but may require a paid license for company use.
• Bundled audio assets carry their own license terms; you must verify usage rights in ATTRIBUTION.md before publishing.
• Only one complete template (“Ink Press”) is currently included, though the README notes more are on the way.

Verdict

Indie hackers and small-team developers who need a slick product promo but lack After Effects skills should look here; if you already have a motion designer or need complex 3D, this agent-mediated workflow will feel like overkill.