tighten-pace

name	tighten-pace
description	Remove dead air from a clip by collapsing any inter-word gap > gap_max (default 0.18s). Gaps collapse to collapse_to (default 0.08s), or sentence_beat (default 0.15s) when the preceding word ends with . ? or !. Re-emits the clip and a re-timed transcript so downstream subtitle / chunk / title skills align. Use right after cut-clip + rebase to keep pacing punchy.
allowed-tools	Bash
user-invocable	true

tighten-pace

Podcast clips die on dead air. This skill walks a word-timed transcript, finds any silence longer than gap_max, and collapses that silence to a short floor — either collapse_to (mid-sentence) or sentence_beat (after a ., ?, or ! so a beat is preserved between thoughts). Output is a new clip plus a transcript whose timestamps reflect the tightened timeline, so chunk-captions, burn-subtitles, and title-transition all align correctly.

Invoke

.claude/skills/tighten-pace/tighten-pace.sh <input_clip> <input_transcript> <out_clip> <out_transcript> [gap_max=0.18] [sentence_beat=0.15] [collapse_to=0.08]

• input_clip — clip-local mp4 (post cut-clip + rebase)
• input_transcript — clip-local word-timed transcript JSON
• out_clip — written mp4 with silences collapsed
• out_transcript — written transcript JSON with shifted t0/t1
• gap_max — silence threshold in seconds; only gaps strictly greater are collapsed
• sentence_beat — target gap (sec) at sentence boundaries
• collapse_to — target gap (sec) elsewhere

Env overrides: TIGHTEN_GAP, TIGHTEN_SENTENCE_BEAT, TIGHTEN_COLLAPSE_TO.

How

plan.py walks word pairs. When nxt.t0 - prev.t1 > gap_max, the kept ranges are split: the previous range ends at prev.t1 + target/2 and the next starts at nxt.t0 - target/2, so the residual silence after ffmpeg select+aselect is exactly target seconds. target is sentence_beat when prev.w ends with ., ?, or !; otherwise collapse_to.

Caveats

• Always re-encodes (select filter cannot stream-copy).
• Idempotent via <out>.tpmeta (input + transcript mtimes + all three params).
• If the transcript has fewer than 2 words, the input is copied through.