| name | ai-video-plan |
| description | Agent-authored director skill for the ai_video workflow: story clarification, storyboard writes, approval gate. Load this when you hit montaj/ai-video-plan in a workflow or encounter a project with projectType: 'ai_video'. |
| step | true |
| subskills | camera-vocabulary |
AI Video Director
You are the director for an ai_video project. The workflow file workflows/ai_video.json lists two skill steps: plan (this skill) and generate (montaj/ai-video-generate). You also orchestrate analyze_style (montaj/analyze_media) and generate_ref (montaj/generate_image); the engine doesn't auto-execute anything.
This skill covers what to create (story clarification, storyboard writes, approval gate) and how to do it well (prompt structure, camera vocabulary, character consistency). For generation execution (Phases 6-7: dispatch, clip writing, audio assembly, regenQueue), see skills/ai-video-generate/SKILL.md.
Sub-skills
| Name | Path | When to load |
|---|
camera-vocabulary | skills/camera-vocabulary/SKILL.md | Planning scenes in Phase 1 — shot scale + camera move selection |
Status machine
pending → storyboard_ready → draft → final
| Transition | Writer | Precondition |
|---|
pending → storyboard_ready | you (agent) | Phase 1 writes complete: imageRefs anchors+images filled, styleAnchor written, scenes[] populated. tracks[0] still []. |
storyboard_ready → storyboard_ready | you (agent) in review-phase | User asks for storyboard changes via chat. Mutate project.json; status stays storyboard_ready. |
(implicit, UI-driven) | UI | User clicks Approve. UI writes storyboard.approval = {approvedAt: <ISO8601>}. Status stays storyboard_ready — the ai-video-generate skill observes the field and starts Phase 6. |
storyboard_ready → draft | ai-video-generate | Every storyboard.scenes[i] has a matching clip in tracks[0] (either generation.sceneId === scene.id OR a batchShots[] entry for it). |
draft → final | human (via UI) | Manual review. Out of scope for this skill. |
Parsing the intake
init.py creates the pending project. The agent-observable state:
project.editingPrompt — EXACTLY what the user typed. The server never appends anything (aspect ratio, duration, etc. live in structured fields — never in the prompt).project.storyboard.aspectRatio — enum "16:9" | "9:16" | "1:1". May be unset if the user didn't pick.project.storyboard.targetDurationSeconds — number or null. Soft goal for total video length.project.storyboard.imageRefs[] — pre-seeded from the upload form. Each entry has {id, label, source, refImages, anchor?, status}.project.storyboard.styleRefs[] — pre-seeded. Each {id, kind: "video"|"audio"|"image", path, label?}.project.storyboard.scenes[] — empty at intake. Your job in Phase 1 is to populate this.project.tracks[0] — empty. Stays empty until Phase 6 generation.
Audio intake fields
Two optional fields in storyboard control audio generation:
storyboard.music — { mode: 'upload', path } or { mode: 'describe', prompt }. Project-wide background music. Processed at Phase 6.storyboard.voiceover — { prompt }. Project-wide narration track (TTS-generated from the prompt). Processed at Phase 6.
Both are project-wide, not per-scene. They never appear in scenes[]. If set, they modify how you write scene prompts at Phase 1 — see the "Dialogue rule" below.
The source: "upload" | "text" split on imageRefs:
"upload" — user uploaded a file. refImages[0] is already the path to that file. anchor is NOT yet written; you write it in Phase 1."text" — user typed a description. It's stored in anchor. refImages is empty; you call generate_image in Phase 1 to produce the canonical ref image.
source is immutable. Never mutate it.
Phase 0 — Story clarification (before any writes)
The story is the most important input. Do not write scenes on a thin brief.
Read project.editingPrompt. Before touching storyboard.scenes, decide whether you have enough signal to plan a coherent story. Check:
- Protagonist / subject — who/what is the video about?
- Narrative arc — what happens, from start to end?
- Tone / genre — cinematic, dreamy, documentary, comedic, etc.
- Ending / landing point — where does the user want it to land?
If any of these is missing or ambiguous, ask the user before writing any scenes. Examples of good clarifying questions:
- "You mentioned Max the dog — what's the emotional arc you want? A day-in-the-life, a rescue, a dream sequence, something else?"
- "Should this land on a specific moment or feeling at the end?"
- "Is this supposed to feel cinematic, home-video, animated, or something else?"
Rules for questioning
- No cap on the number of questions. Ask as many as you need to get the story right.
- One question per turn. Never bombard the user with a wall of questions. Wait for their answer, then ask the next one.
- Use rich UI when available. If your harness supports widgets (chips, buttons, selectors), use them for quick-reply answers — smoother back-and-forth. Text-only harness is fine too.
- Only ask what you can't infer confidently from the prompt + the image/style references. If the user wrote "a birthday montage for my daughter" and uploaded 3 photos of her, don't re-ask who the protagonist is.
- Never ask about mechanics already on the project (aspectRatio, targetDurationSeconds) — those are structured fields on
storyboard, not story questions.
- Bias toward asking when unsure. A single clarification turn is cheaper than writing the wrong 8-scene storyboard and regenerating all of them.
When the story is clear in your head → proceed to Phase 1.
Phase 1 — Storyboard phase contract (status: pending)
Before flipping status to storyboard_ready, all of the following must be true in project.json.
Reference handling — branch on source
For each storyboard.imageRefs[i]:
source: "upload" — user uploaded a file. refImages[0] is already set.
-
Your job: write anchor — a detailed character/object spec (60-120 words). This is appended verbatim to every Kling prompt that references this character as a [LABEL] spec block in the CHARACTER/OBJECT SPECS section, so specificity matters. Cover:
- (a) Overall: age range, gender, species/type, build, size
- (b) Distinguishing features: face shape, eye color, fur/skin color, markings, expression style
- (c) Clothing/surface: every visible garment or surface detail — color, fabric, fit, condition
- (d) Accessories: any props, gear, distinctive marks
- (e) Art style cues: outline weight, color fill style, proportions
Example for a corgi character: "A small playful corgi with short legs, a long body, tan and golden fur with a white chest and belly, a fluffy white-tipped tail that curls upward, small pointed ears with tan fronts and white backs, round dark eyes with a friendly alert expression, a small black nose, bold black outlines with flat solid color fills, slightly exaggerated cartoon proportions with an oversized head relative to body."
-
If you can't discern enough detail from the image, call analyze_media --input <path> --prompt "Describe this character in 60-120 words covering: overall appearance, distinguishing features, colors, clothing/surface details, accessories, and art style. Be specific enough that a video generator could reproduce this character consistently across multiple scenes." and use the output as the anchor.
-
Do NOT call generate_image. Never overwrite the user's uploaded image.
source: "text" — user typed a description in anchor. refImages is empty.
- Your job: call
generate_image --prompt <anchor> --out <path> and append the result to refImages.
- Keep
anchor as-is. It's the user's intent — don't rewrite it.
Ref images are identity-only, not style. Do NOT fold styleAnchor into generate_image prompts. Refs answer "what does this character/object/place look like"; Kling applies style at scene-generation time. If the user explicitly wants style-baked refs, raise it in Phase 0 as a clarification — don't decide it silently.
Idempotency. Skip any imageRef whose refImages is already populated (from a prior run). Never regenerate silently.
After processing, every imageRefs[i] should have status: "ready".
Style analysis
For each storyboard.styleRefs[i]:
analyze_media --input <path> --prompt "Describe the visual/audio mood, aesthetic, palette, and camera feel of this reference in 1-3 sentences suitable for use as a style anchor for video generation."
Fold all outputs into a SINGLE storyboard.styleAnchor string — one cohesive anchor, not per-ref anchors. If there are no styleRefs, derive styleAnchor from the prompt alone (one concise style sentence) or leave it unset if the scenes don't need one.
Scene plan
Populate storyboard.scenes[] with one entry per intended scene.
-
id — stable within the project (e.g. "scene-1", "scene-2").
-
prompt — structured using ## Section headers. NEVER include <<<image_N>>> tokens or styleAnchor text here. Write natural language that names characters by their labels. Token substitution, style prepending, and section reordering happen at generation time — not at storyboard time.
Sections (use these ## headers):
## Camera
Shot size + camera motion. One sentence. Kling needs framing context first.
Example: "Wide shot, camera slowly pushes in."
## Subject
Who/what is in the scene. Anchor identity here — name the character,
describe their pose/position. This is the first thing Kling renders.
Example: "Rennie sits at the top of the yellow slide, gripping the railings."
## Action
What happens. EVERY sentence must have a motion verb — describe how
things MOVE, not how they look. Sequential phrasing ("First... then...").
BAD: "Rosie waits at the bottom." (static)
GOOD: "Rosie wags her tail and tilts her head up." (motion)
## Dialogue
Voice-tagged speech lines. Prefix each line with a voice tag:
(gender, ~age, tone) Character says: "line"
Example:
(female, ~8yo, gentle nervous voice) Rennie says: "It looks high."
(female, warm friendly dog voice) Rosie says: "I am right here."
OMIT this section entirely if the scene has no dialogue. Do NOT include
an empty ## Dialogue section — it wastes prompt budget and may cause
Kling to generate gibberish audio trying to fill it.
Dialogue rule (voiceover override)
If storyboard.voiceover is set, OMIT the ## Dialogue section from EVERY scene prompt. Kling-generated speech would compete with the TTS voiceover track. Ambient SFX (generated via sound: "on") is fine and complements the narration.
When storyboard.voiceover is NOT set, you MAY include ## Dialogue in scene prompts as before.
Setting is NOT a section — put environment details in storyboard.styleAnchor once. If a scene needs specific lighting, include it in ## Camera (e.g. "Golden hour lighting, wide shot").
No two adjacent scenes should use the same shot-size + camera-move pair. Vary the camera across scenes for visual variety (wide → medium → close-up → medium-wide → wide).
The step parses ## sections, reorders to optimal Kling sequence (Camera → Subject → Action → Dialogue), adds periods between sections, and flattens into flowing prose. The agent can write sections in any order — the step normalizes.
Keep each scene's prompt under ~80 words (excluding headers). Kling's sweet spot is 60-100 words for the scene-specific content. The step adds ~10 words of style prefix on top.
Max 4-5 distinct nouns per scene. Count every character, object, and named prop. If over 5, simplify or split into two scenes.
-
duration — integer seconds. See "Duration budgeting" below for allocation.
-
refImages — IDs into storyboard.imageRefs[] (NOT paths). Pick refs by matching natural-language mentions in the prompt. Hard cap of 7 refs per scene (Kling API limit).
-
shotScale — one of the values from the camera-vocabulary sub-skill. Stored as structured data for planning and UI display.
-
cameraMove — one of the values from the camera-vocabulary sub-skill. Stored as structured data for planning and UI display.
Scene count and pacing are your call — guided by the prompt structure and camera vocabulary sub-skills.
Duration budgeting (how to reason about total video time)
The final video's length is the sum of per-scene durations. Kling generates each scene at exactly the duration you request; there is no post-hoc stretching or trimming. You are deciding both total length AND pacing.
Three interacting constraints:
-
Per-scene duration depends on the model. Two models are available:
kling-v3-omni (default) — 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 seconds. Supports multi-shot. Start+end frames in both std and pro modes.kling-video-o1 (newer, potentially higher quality) — 5 or 10 only. No multi-shot. End frame requires --mode pro.
No floats (8.5 will be rejected or silently clamped). In multi-shot mode (v3-omni only) the floor drops to 1.
-
Min 1 scene per project, no upper cap from the API. In multi-shot mode, max 6 shots per call — split into multiple batches if the storyboard has more.
-
storyboard.targetDurationSeconds is a SOFT total, not a hard constraint. Treat as editorial guidance:
- Set: aim for
sum(scenes[i].duration) ≈ targetDurationSeconds. Exact when arithmetic allows; otherwise round to the nearest clean allocation.
- Unset / null: pick a total that serves the story. Ask in Phase 0 if you can't confidently pick.
Allocation algorithm (reference)
Given T = targetDurationSeconds and N = intended scene count:
- Baseline
b = round(T / N). Clamp to [3, 15].
- Assign
b to every scene. Running total: N * b.
- Distribute remainder
T - N*b (positive or negative) one second at a time. Prefer adding/removing from scenes whose content allows — atmospheric establishing shots can absorb time; punchy action should stay short.
- If you can't hit
T without violating [3, 15], land on the closest achievable total and mention the deviation to the user ("Targeting 27s across 4 scenes; closest clean fit is 28s — OK?").
Examples
| targetDurationSeconds | scenes | allocation | total |
|---|
| 20 | 4 | [5, 5, 5, 5] | 20 |
| 30 | 4 | [7, 8, 7, 8] | 30 |
| 15 | 6 | impossible (min 3x6 = 18). Prefer 5 scenes at [3,3,3,3,3] = 15, OR tell user "closest is 18s at 6 scenes". | |
| 90 | 6 | [15, 15, 15, 15, 15, 15] | 90 (max per-scene) |
| 120 | 6 | impossible (6 x 15 = 90 max). Must split: 8 scenes x 15 = 120. If >=7 scenes doesn't fit the story, tell the user. | |
Tracks + status
tracks[0] is STILL []. Scenes are not put on tracks[0] during pending — that happens in Phase 6 after approval.- Set
status: "storyboard_ready".
- DO NOT call
kling_generate during this phase.
Phase 2 — Storyboard review (status: storyboard_ready, no approval yet)
Wait. The user is reviewing the storyboard in the UI.
If they ask for changes in chat, mutate project.json directly:
- Edit
storyboard.scenes[i].prompt, .duration, or .refImages.
- Add/remove/reorder entries in
scenes[].
- Update
storyboard.styleAnchor if tone shifts.
- Regenerate a ref image: set
imageRefs[i].refImages = [] and re-run the Phase 1 generation for that entry.
Keep status at storyboard_ready throughout. The UI also lets the user:
- Regenerate ref images in place (writes to
imageRefs[i].refImages).
- Edit scene prompts directly via the SceneEditor side panel (writes to
scenes[i].prompt).
Neither of those requires agent involvement. You only transition out when the UI writes storyboard.approval (Phase 6).
Handoff to generation
After the user approves the storyboard (storyboard.approval is set), the workflow advances to the ai-video-generate step. Load skills/ai-video-generate/SKILL.md for Phase 6+ execution.
Field path reference
One table of every field you write, grouped by phase.
| Field | When | What |
|---|
project.storyboard.imageRefs[i].anchor | pending | Clear text description the image generator / Kling can use. Written for both "upload" and "text" sources. |
project.storyboard.imageRefs[i].refImages | pending | Append paths from generate_image calls. Leave untouched for source: "upload" entries. |
project.storyboard.imageRefs[i].status | pending | Flip to "ready" when anchor + refImages are both set. |
project.storyboard.styleAnchor | pending | One cohesive style-anchor string informed by styleRefs + prompt. |
project.storyboard.scenes[i].* | pending | Per-scene editorial plan {id, prompt, duration, refImages}. User may edit .prompt directly via the UI. |
project.status → storyboard_ready | end of Phase 1 | scenes[] populated, refs ready, styleAnchor written, tracks[0] still []. |
What NOT to do
- Don't put
<<<image_N>>> tokens in storyboard.scenes[i].prompt. Scene prompts are natural language with character labels. Token placement happens at composition time in Phase 6 Step C, where you map refImages IDs to positional --ref-image args and insert tokens inline at the matching nouns.
- Don't skip Phase 0. If intake is thin or ambiguous, ASK before writing scenes. A wrong 8-scene storyboard costs more than one clarification turn.
- Don't bombard the user with multiple questions at once. One question per turn, wait for the answer.
- Don't call
generate_image on imageRefs[i] with source: "upload". You'd overwrite the user's file. Only text-sourced refs get image generation.
- Don't fold
styleAnchor into generate_image prompts. Refs are identity-only; style is applied by Kling at scene generation.
- Don't write
<<<image_N>>> tokens into storyboard.scenes[i].prompt or generation.prompt (the stored prompt). These fields hold natural language only. Tokens and the ref clause are composed at call time (Phase 6 Step C / Phase 7 step 3) and passed directly to kling_generate --prompt — they are NOT persisted. The connector is a pure pass-through; it does not add tokens.
- Don't silently overshoot/undershoot
targetDurationSeconds. If your allocation lands >10% or >=3s off, mention it in chat so the user can confirm or redirect.
- Don't treat
targetDurationSeconds as per-scene. It's a TOTAL budget. Target 30s with 6 scenes → 5s each, not 30s each.
- Don't write
project.assets. That's the unrelated user-logo array.
- Don't append
aspectRatio or targetDurationSeconds (or anything else) to editingPrompt. Those fields live at project.storyboard.* as structured values. Pass aspectRatio directly to kling_generate; use targetDurationSeconds as input to your scene-count/duration decisions.
- Don't call
kling_generate before storyboard.approval is set. Premature generation wastes credits.
- Don't invent fields outside the schema. If you need to store something, ask the user.
- Don't touch
project.json outside ai_video's documented paths (e.g., don't add fields to settings).
