hyperframes

HyperFrames is a free, open-source framework for turning HTML, CSS, media, and seekable animations into deterministic MP4 videos. Use it locally with the CLI, from AI coding agents with skills, or as the rendering core behind hosted authoring workflows.

The HyperFrames Studio app is free to use as well; its Pro plan adds HeyGen's top video, image, voice and music models.

Using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or another coding agent? Run npx hyperframes skills update once, then ask your agent to make a video.

Quick Start

With an AI coding agent

For Claude Code, install the versioned plugin:

claude plugin marketplace add heygen-com/hyperframes
claude plugin install hyperframes@hyperframes

To enable auto-update for the hyperframes marketplace, run claude in a terminal in your project. In Claude Code's terminal UI, run /plugin, then select Marketplaces → hyperframes → Enable auto-update. Afterward, use /hyperframes:hyperframes. See the plugin guide for Copilot, VS Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, updates, and migration.

For standalone skills (including OpenCode), use:

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

The picker opens with nothing pre-selected — the Core Skills group is all you need; /slideshow, /remotion-to-hyperframes, /reverse-any-video, /style-sampling and /figma install on demand. Without the picker (a script or a CI job), npx hyperframes skills update installs exactly the core set, whereas skills add --all installs all 9 published skills. The six repo-internal skills under .claude/skills / .agents/skills are excluded by default. For the full published set use npx hyperframes skills.

skills add resolves the skills.sh registry blob, which can lag main by hours. npx hyperframes skills update installs the skills from the release tag that matches your CLI version, so they match the CLI that runs them.

Run project-local installs from your video project's directory. From a HyperFrames checkout, use npx hyperframes skills update for a global install instead: a project-local installer target can overlap the tracked skills/ source and overwrite uncommitted edits. See contributor setup.

Try a prompt like:

Using /hyperframes, create a 10-second product intro with a fade-in title, a background video, and subtle background music.

The skills teach agents the HyperFrames production loop: plan the video, write valid HTML, wire seekable animations, add media, lint, preview, and render. They work with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, IBM Bob, and other coding agents that support skills.

Skills

HyperFrames ships 9 skills. Make any video by asking for it; the /hyperframes skill carries the contract and the references (film, captions, overlays, motion, look). Read it first.

For standalone installation, default to the core set (/hyperframes, /hyperframes-cli, /hyperframes-registry, /media-use). npx hyperframes skills update installs exactly that from anywhere; the interactive picker (npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes) lists it as the "Core Skills" group, nothing pre-selected. The picker is interactive-only — a non-interactive or agent run without --skill installs all 9. Use npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --all to install the complete published set deliberately (skips the picker), or npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --skill <name> for just one (bare name, no leading /).

Standalone installs stay lean after that: npx hyperframes init installs the core set only when it is missing and never touches a skill you already have (npx hyperframes skills update refreshes them, and never removes one); /figma, /slideshow, /remotion-to-hyperframes and /reverse-any-video install on demand with npx hyperframes skills update <name>. Nothing re-pulls the full set behind your back.

Plugin packages

Plugins bundle the full skill catalog and use their agent's update manager. bun run package:agent-plugin builds the committed portable ZIP, source metadata, and SHA-256 checksum. See the maintainer checklist.

Upload to Codex

Build the upload-ready Codex plugin archive from the committed HEAD version of the manifest, brand assets, and skills:

bun run package:codex-plugin

This writes dist/hyperframes-plugin.zip with a hyperframes/ root folder and fails if the archive exceeds Codex's 100 MB upload limit.

Core set

Skill	Use when
/hyperframes	Read first for any request to make, edit, animate or render a video, motion graphic, captions or overlays with HyperFrames (HTML rendered to video). Holds the render contract and the work loop, and points to the references for format, motion, look, captions, whole films and storyboards.
/hyperframes-cli	The HyperFrames CLI by job — scaffold, check, look at frames, edit the timeline, preview, render locally or in the cloud, publish, project history — plus reading its JSON and recovering from build or render failures.
/hyperframes-registry	About 450 ready-made blocks and components installed as editable source — transitions, overlays, titles, kinetic type, captions, charts, maps, 3D, camera moves. Use before hand-building any named visual; also for hyperframes add and catalog.
/media-use	Get or make any media for a video — music, sound effects, images, icons, logos, voiceover, avatar and generated video, transcripts, cutouts, colour grades and looks — with HeyGen or free local tools, and mix placed audio. Also for footage that looks dark, flat or dull.

On demand

Skill	Use when
/figma	Bring Figma into a video — rendered assets, brand tokens, components, storyboard frames as reconstructed motion, shaders and connector-assisted motion. Use when you paste a figma.com link.
/slideshow	A presentation, pitch deck or interactive deck — discrete slides, fragment reveals, branching, hotspot navigation, presenter mode with speaker notes. Output is a navigable deck, not a rendered MP4.
/remotion-to-hyperframes	Bringing existing video code or footage into HyperFrames (Remotion first; also Motion Canvas, Lottie, Three.js, canvas, other tools' renders), verified frame by frame.
/reverse-any-video	Rebuilding any video file as an editable HyperFrames project (motion graphics, talking heads, live action, AI-generated footage), checked frame by frame against the original. HyperFrames Pro.
/style-sampling	Making a new episode on your topic in one of five proven styles: Collage Explainer, Finance Explainer, Animated Science Explainer, 3D Brand Explainer, 3D True Crime. HyperFrames Pro.

For visual design handoff workflows, see the Claude Design guide and Open Design guide.

Manually with the CLI

npx hyperframes init my-video
cd my-video
npx hyperframes preview      # preview in browser with live reload
npx hyperframes render       # render to MP4

Requirements: Node.js 22+, FFmpeg

What You Can Build

Need ideas? Browse the Showcase for finished videos you can watch, read, run, and remix.

• Product launch videos and feature announcements
• PR walkthroughs with animated code diffs, narration, and captions
• Data visualizations, chart races, and map animations
• Social videos with kinetic captions, overlays, and music
• Docs-to-video, PDF-to-video, and site-tour explainers
• Reusable motion graphics for automated content pipelines

Frame.md

frame.md — your design system, ready for video.

Every brand has a design.md. None of them were written for a camera. frame.md is the missing translation layer: it takes your web-context design spec and inverts it for the frame — the same tokens, the same rules, but rewritten so an AI agent can compose a promo video without guessing at scale or reaching for web chrome.

The output is a DESIGN.md superset your whole toolchain can read. Atoms stay sacred. Composition stays free. Numbers come from the script.

Browse and remix them all at hyperframes.studio/design.

How It Works

Define a video as HTML. Add data attributes for timing and tracks. Use GSAP, CSS, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or your own frame adapter for seekable animation.

<div id="stage" data-composition-id="launch" data-start="0" data-width="1920" data-height="1080">
  <video
    class="clip"
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="0"
    src="intro.mp4"
    muted
    playsinline
  ></video>

  <h1 id="title" class="clip" data-start="1" data-duration="4" data-track-index="1">Launch day</h1>

  <audio
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="6"
    data-track-index="2"
    data-volume="0.5"
    src="music.wav"
  ></audio>

  <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/gsap@3/dist/gsap.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    const tl = gsap.timeline({ paused: true });
    tl.from("#title", { opacity: 0, y: 40, duration: 0.8 }, 1);
    window.__timelines = window.__timelines || {};
    window.__timelines.launch = tl;
  </script>
</div>

Preview instantly in the browser. Render locally or in Docker. The renderer seeks each frame in headless Chrome and encodes the result with FFmpeg, so the same input produces the same video.

HyperFrames Stack

HyperFrames is the open-source rendering engine, plus a growing set of tools around HTML-native video creation.

Piece	Status	What it does
CLI	Available	Scaffold, preview, lint, inspect, and render local video projects
Core / Engine / Producer	Available	Parse compositions, drive headless Chrome, encode video, and mix audio
Catalog	Available	Reusable blocks and components for transitions, overlays, captions, charts, maps, and effects
Agent skills	Available	Teach coding agents the video-production patterns that generic web docs miss
Studio	Available, evolving	Browser surface for previewing and editing compositions
AWS Lambda rendering	Available	Deploy a distributed render stack and drive renders from your laptop or CI
hyperframes.studio	Available	Community playground for previewing, iterating, sharing, and rendering HTML-native video projects
frame.md	Available	Invert your design system for the camera — a DESIGN.md superset an agent can compose video from

Catalog

Install ready-to-use blocks and components:

npx hyperframes add flash-through-white   # shader transition
npx hyperframes add instagram-follow      # social overlay
npx hyperframes add data-chart            # animated chart

Browse the catalog at hyperframes.heygen.com/catalog.

Why HyperFrames?

• HTML-native: compositions are HTML files with data attributes. No React requirement, no proprietary timeline format.
• Agent-friendly: agents already write HTML, and the CLI is non-interactive by default.
• Deterministic: same input, same frames, same output. Built for CI, regression tests, and automated rendering.
• No build step: an index.html composition plays as-is and can be previewed directly in the browser.
• Adapter-based animation: bring GSAP, CSS animations, Lottie, Three.js, Anime.js, WAAPI, or a custom runtime.
• Open source: Apache 2.0 license, with no per-render fees or commercial-use thresholds.

HyperFrames vs Remotion

HyperFrames is inspired by Remotion. Both tools render video with headless Chrome and FFmpeg. The main difference is the authoring model: Remotion's bet is React components; HyperFrames' bet is plain HTML that humans and agents can both write easily.

	HyperFrames	Remotion
Authoring	HTML + CSS + seekable animation	React components
Build step	None; index.html plays as-is	Bundler required
Agent handoff	Plain HTML files	JSX / React project
Library-clock animations	Seekable, frame-accurate via adapters	Wall-clock animation patterns need care
Distributed rendering	Local and AWS Lambda render paths	Remotion Lambda, mature cloud renderer
License	Apache 2.0	Source-available Remotion License

Read the full comparison in the HyperFrames vs Remotion guide.

Documentation

Full documentation: hyperframes.heygen.com/introduction

• Quickstart
• Showcase
• Guides
• API Reference
• Catalog
• Examples
• AWS Lambda rendering

Packages

Package	Description
hyperframes	CLI for creating, previewing, linting, and rendering compositions
@hyperframes/core	Types, parsers, generators, linter, runtime, and frame adapters
@hyperframes/engine	Seekable page-to-video capture engine using Puppeteer and FFmpeg
@hyperframes/producer	Full rendering pipeline for capture, encode, and audio mix
@hyperframes/studio	Browser-based composition editor UI
@hyperframes/player	Embeddable <hyperframes-player> web component
@hyperframes/shader-transitions	WebGL shader transitions for compositions
@hyperframes/aws-lambda	AWS Lambda SDK and deployment surface for distributed renders

Community

HyperFrames is used in production at HeyGen, with community examples from teams like tldraw, TanStack, and others in ADOPTERS.md. Open a PR if your team is using HyperFrames.

• Questions and ideas: Discord
• Bugs and feature requests: GitHub Issues
• User research: Book a casual 30-minute conversation with the HyperFrames team — no preparation or sales pitch
• Security reports: SECURITY.md
• Contributions: CONTRIBUTING.md

Development Note

The repo uses Git LFS for golden regression-test baselines under packages/producer/tests/**/output.mp4 (about 240 MB of .mp4 files). If you're cloning the full repo for development, install Git LFS first:

# macOS
brew install git-lfs

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install git-lfs

# Windows
winget install GitHub.GitLFS

# Then, once per machine
git lfs install

If you only need source files, you can skip LFS content:

GIT_LFS_SKIP_SMUDGE=1 git clone https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes.git

License

Apache 2.0