| name | open-montage |
| description | Agentic video production system. Describe a video idea in natural language; the agent orchestrates research, scripting, asset generation, editing, and rendering across 11 pipelines and 49 tools. Supports zero-key mode (Piper TTS + Pexels stock + Remotion + FFmpeg) and premium APIs (ElevenLabs, Runway, Kling, Veo 3, Suno). Use when the user says "make a video", "create an explainer", "produce a trailer", "video production", "animate", or "podcast to video". From calesthio/OpenMontage.
|
| version | 1.0.0 |
| author | calesthio (OpenMontage) |
| tags | ["video","production","animation","tts","avatar","remotion","explainer","cinematic"] |
| env_vars | ["FAL_KEY","ELEVENLABS_API_KEY","OPENAI_API_KEY","SUNO_API_KEY","HEYGEN_API_KEY","RUNWAY_API_KEY","PEXELS_API_KEY","PIXABAY_API_KEY"] |
Open Montage — Agentic Video Production
Describe your video idea. The agent orchestrates the entire production pipeline: research, scripting, asset generation, editing, and final render.
When to Use This Skill
- "Make a 60-second explainer about quantum computing"
- "Create a cinematic trailer for our product launch"
- "Produce an animated video in Ghibli style"
- "Turn this podcast episode into video highlights"
- "Create an avatar spokesperson video"
- "Make a screen demo of our app"
- Any video production from natural language description
When Not to Use
- For simple image generation — use
art (Nano Banana 2) or comfyui
- For video transcoding/editing only — use
ffmpeg-processing
- For academic diagrams — use
paperbanana
- For 3D modelling/rendering — use
blender
- For 3D Gaussian Splatting — use
lichtfeld-studio
Architecture
User: "Make a 45-second explainer about black holes"
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Open Montage Dispatcher │
│ (this skill — reads manifests) │
└──────────────┬──────────────────┘
│ Selects pipeline
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Pipeline Manifest (YAML) │
│ e.g. animated-explainer.yaml │
│ Defines: stages, tools, order │
└──────────────┬──────────────────┘
│ Agent executes stages
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ 49 Python Tools │ ← Cloned on first use
│ video/ audio/ graphics/ │ to ~/.open-montage/
│ enhancement/ analysis/ avatar/ │
└──────────────┬──────────────────┘
│ Renders
▼
┌─────────────────────────────────┐
│ Remotion Composer (React) │
│ + FFmpeg post-production │
└─────────────────────────────────┘
11 Production Pipelines
| Pipeline | Description | Key Tools |
|---|
animated-explainer | Research-driven explainer with narration | Perplexity → Script → FLUX/Veo → ElevenLabs → Remotion |
animation | Kinetic typography and motion graphics | Remotion → FFmpeg |
avatar-spokesperson | Talking head presentations | HeyGen/SadTalker → TTS → Composite |
cinematic | Trailers and mood-driven edits | Runway/Kling → Music (Suno) → Color grade |
clip-factory | Batch short-form extraction from long video | WhisperX → Scene detect → Auto-trim |
hybrid | Source footage + AI support visuals | Input video → AI B-roll → Stitch |
localization-dub | Multilingual distribution | WhisperX → Translate → TTS (target lang) → Lip sync |
podcast-repurpose | Highlight extraction from podcasts | WhisperX → Highlight detect → Visual overlay |
screen-demo | Software walkthroughs | Screen capture → Annotation → TTS narration |
talking-head | Speaker-focused footage editing | Face enhance → Background → Audio cleanup |
On First Use — Clone Full Repository
The pipeline defs are baked into this skill, but the 49 Python tools and 767 skill
files live in the full repository. On first invocation:
if [ ! -d ~/.open-montage ]; then
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/calesthio/OpenMontage.git ~/.open-montage
cd ~/.open-montage && pip install -r requirements.txt --break-system-packages
cd remotion-composer && npm install
else
cd ~/.open-montage && git pull --rebase
fi
After cloning, tools are available at ~/.open-montage/tools/ and skills at
~/.open-montage/skills/.
Zero-Key Mode (No API Keys Required)
These capabilities work without any API keys:
- Piper TTS: Offline text-to-speech narration
- Pexels/Pixabay: Free stock footage and images
- Remotion: React-based video composition and animation
- FFmpeg: Post-production, trimming, mixing, encoding
- ManimCE: Mathematical animations
- Auto-captioning: WhisperX transcription → subtitle burn-in
cd ~/.open-montage && make demo
Premium API Capabilities
| Provider | Capability | Key |
|---|
| FAL.ai | FLUX images, Kling video, Veo 3 video, MiniMax, Recraft | FAL_KEY |
| ElevenLabs | Premium TTS (29 languages), Music, SFX | ELEVENLABS_API_KEY |
| OpenAI | DALL-E 3, OpenAI TTS | OPENAI_API_KEY |
| Suno | AI music generation (full songs) | SUNO_API_KEY |
| HeyGen | Avatar generation | HEYGEN_API_KEY |
| Runway | Gen-4 video generation | RUNWAY_API_KEY |
| Pexels | Higher-quality stock footage | PEXELS_API_KEY |
Execution Flow
- Route: Select pipeline from the table above based on user's request
- Research: Use
perplexity-research skill or OpenMontage's built-in web research
- Script: Agent writes script following pipeline's skill guide
- Assets: Generate images/video/audio using pipeline's tool chain
- Review: Agent self-reviews by extracting frames and transcribing
- Compose: Remotion renders or FFmpeg stitches final video
- Output: MP4 with subtitles, mixed audio, platform-optimised resolution
Checkpoint Protocol
Each stage saves state as JSON. If interrupted, resume from last checkpoint:
ls ~/.open-montage/checkpoints/
Cost Governance
Built-in cost estimation runs before each API call. Configure spend caps in
~/.open-montage/config.yaml:
cost_governance:
max_per_action: 2.00
max_per_pipeline: 25.00
require_approval_above: 5.00
Integration with Existing Skills
| Phase | Our Skill | How It Integrates |
|---|
| Research | perplexity-research | Substitute for OpenMontage's built-in web search |
| Image gen | comfyui | Alternative for local Stable Diffusion when available |
| Image gen | art | Nano Banana 2 for stylised thumbnails and editorial art |
| Post-production | ffmpeg-processing | Direct overlap — can use either |
| Narration review | notebooklm | Generate audio overview of script for review |
| Script quality | codex-companion | Cross-model review of script via GPT-5.4 |
Troubleshooting
Remotion build fails:
cd ~/.open-montage/remotion-composer && npm install && npx remotion --help
Piper TTS not found:
pip install piper-tts --break-system-packages
GPU tools (local video gen):
cd ~/.open-montage && make install-gpu
Attribution
OpenMontage by calesthio. MIT License. 11 pipelines, 49 tools, 400+ agent skills.
