name: video-podcast-maker description: Use when the user gives a topic and wants an automated video podcast created, or asks to learn visual design patterns from a reference video/image. Make sure to use this skill whenever the user mentions creating a video, podcast, knowledge video, Bilibili content, or talking-head explainer from a topic — even if they don't say "video podcast" explicitly. Produces 4K video via research → script → TTS → Remotion → MP4 + BGM. argument-hint: "[topic]" effort: high author: Agents365-ai category: Content Creation version: 2.3.0 created: 2025-01-27 updated: 2026-05-06 bilibili: https://space.bilibili.com/441831884 github: https://github.com/Agents365-ai/video-podcast-maker dependencies:

• remotion-best-practices metadata: openclaw: requires: bins: [python3, ffmpeg, node, npx] primaryEnv: AZURE_SPEECH_KEY emoji: "🎬" homepage: https://github.com/Agents365-ai/video-podcast-maker os: ["macos", "linux"] install:
  • kind: brew formula: ffmpeg bins: [ffmpeg]
  • kind: uv package: edge-tts bins: [edge-tts]

REQUIRED: Load Remotion Best Practices First

This skill depends on remotion-best-practices. You MUST invoke it before proceeding:

Invoke the skill/tool named: remotion-best-practices

Video Podcast Maker

Automated pipeline for 4K Bilibili horizontal knowledge videos from a topic. Coding agent + TTS backend + Remotion + FFmpeg.

Contents

• Bootstrap — update check + prerequisites (run before Step 1)
• Execution Modes — Auto vs Interactive, default decisions
• Workflow — the 15 steps + phase-file pointers + mandatory stops
• Hard Rules — non-negotiable production constraints + output specs
• Per-Video Layout — directory structure, --public-dir, naming
• Additional Resources — when to load each references/ file
• User Preferences
• Troubleshooting

Bootstrap

Resolve SKILL_DIR to the directory containing this SKILL.md. If your agent exposes a built-in skill directory variable (e.g. ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}), map it to SKILL_DIR.

SKILL_DIR="${SKILL_DIR:-${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}}"

# 1. Update check (notify-only, throttled to 24h)
"${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_update.sh"

# 2. Prerequisites (CLIs + backend env vars)
python3 "${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_prereqs.py"

check_update.sh output:

• UPDATE_AVAILABLE vX.Y.Z -> vA.B.C — tell the user the version delta and ask before running git -C "${SKILL_DIR}" pull --ff-only. Notify-only by design — never pull without consent (the skill directory belongs to the user).
• UP_TO_DATE / SKIPPED_RECENT_CHECK / MANUAL_INSTALL — continue silently.

Prereqs failures — see README.md for setup. The check is backend-aware (resolves TTS_BACKEND env → user_prefs.json global.tts.backend → edge default), so only env vars required by the active backend are validated.

Design Learning shortcut: If the user provides a reference video/image or asks to save/list/delete style profiles, see references/design-learning.md instead of running the workflow below.

Execution Modes

Detect at workflow start:

• "Make a video about..." / no special instructions → Auto Mode (default)
• "I want to control each step" / "interactive" → Interactive Mode

Auto Mode defaults

Full pipeline with sensible defaults. Mandatory stop at Step 9 (Studio review); Step 10 (4K render) only fires when the user says "render 4K" / "render final".

Override any default in the initial request:

• "make a video about AI, burn subtitles" → auto + subtitles on
• "use dark theme, AI thumbnails" → auto + dark + imagen
• "need screenshots" → auto + media collection enabled

Interactive Mode

Prompts at each decision point.

Workflow

At Step 1 start, create one task per step in your agent's tracker (Claude Code TaskCreate / Codex todo list / equivalent). Mark in_progress on start, completed on finish. Files in videos/{name}/ are the durable record — if interrupted, inspect the directory to determine where to resume.

Mandatory stops (bold rows above):

• Step 9 — Studio review. MUST launch npx remotion studio and wait for user feedback before rendering. NEVER render 4K until the user explicitly confirms ("render 4K" / "render final").
• Step 14 — verify_output.py. MUST pass before declaring the video done. Exit 0 = green; exit 2 = warnings still publishable. Auto-fixes common omissions (creates final_video.mp4 if missing). For machine-readable output add --format json (auto when piped).

Pre-render audit (recommended) — before Step 9:

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/audit_beat_sync.py <Video.tsx> <timing.json>

Flags beats that drift > 1.5s from narration. Especially important for kinetic-typography videos.

Validation Checkpoints

Hard Rules

Visual minimums (text sizes, content width, safe zones, animation safety) live in references/design-guide.md. MUST load before Step 9.

Output Specs

Per-Video Layout

project-root/                           # Remotion project root
├── src/remotion/                       # Remotion source (Root.tsx, compositions, index.ts)
├── videos/{video-name}/                # Per-video assets (the agent's working dir)
│   ├── topic_definition.md             # Step 1
│   ├── topic_research.md               # Step 2
│   ├── podcast.txt                     # Step 4: narration script
│   ├── phonemes.json                   # Step 4.5: zh-CN pronunciation overrides
│   ├── podcast_audio.wav               # Step 8: TTS audio
│   ├── podcast_audio.srt               # Step 8: subtitles
│   ├── timing.json                     # Step 8: timeline (drives animations)
│   ├── thumbnail_*.png                 # Step 7
│   ├── output.mp4                      # Step 10: 4K render (no BGM)
│   ├── video_with_bgm.mp4              # Step 11
│   ├── final_video.mp4                 # Step 12: final output
│   └── bgm.mp3                         # Background music
└── remotion.config.ts

--public-dir per video

Remotion commands MUST use --public-dir videos/{name}/ — each video's assets stay in its own directory, no copy to public/. Enables parallel renders.

npx remotion studio src/remotion/index.ts --public-dir videos/{name}/
npx remotion render src/remotion/index.ts CompositionId videos/{name}/output.mp4 --public-dir videos/{name}/ --video-bitrate 16M
npx remotion still src/remotion/index.ts Thumbnail16x9 videos/{name}/thumbnail.png --public-dir videos/{name}/

Naming

• Video name {video-name}: lowercase English, hyphen-separated (e.g. reference-manager-comparison)
• Section name {section}: lowercase English, underscore-separated, matches [SECTION:xxx]
• Thumbnail naming (16:9 AND 4:3 both required):

Additional Resources

Load on demand — do NOT load all at once:

Script suite dispatcher

All scripts under ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/ are reachable through one hierarchical entry point:

python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py --help                  # list resources
python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py <resource> --help       # list actions
python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py <resource> <action> --help    # forwards to underlying script
python3 ${SKILL_DIR}/scripts/cli.py schema [<method>]       # JSON parameter schema

Routes: tts run|validate, verify, audit beats, shorts gen, design list|show|delete|add, prereqs, prefs get|migrate|backend|bgm-path, schema [<method>]. Direct script invocation (python3 scripts/<name>.py ...) keeps working — the dispatcher is additive.

User Preferences

Skill auto-learns and applies preferences. Full commands and learning details: references/troubleshooting.md.

• Storage: user_prefs.json (auto-created from user_prefs.template.json, schema in prefs_schema.json).
• Priority: Root.tsx defaults < global < topic_patterns[type] < current instructions.
• User commands: "show preferences" · "reset preferences" · "save as X default".

Troubleshooting

See references/troubleshooting.md on errors, BGM options, preference learning, design-learning issues.