open-montage

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:

# Clone or update OpenMontage
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

# Run zero-key demo
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

1. Route: Select pipeline from the table above based on user's request
2. Research: Use perplexity-research skill or OpenMontage's built-in web research
3. Script: Agent writes script following pipeline's skill guide
4. Assets: Generate images/video/audio using pipeline's tool chain
5. Review: Agent self-reviews by extracting frames and transcribing
6. Compose: Remotion renders or FFmpeg stitches final video
7. Output: MP4 with subtitles, mixed audio, platform-optimised resolution

Checkpoint Protocol

Each stage saves state as JSON. If interrupted, resume from last checkpoint:

# State files at ~/.open-montage/checkpoints/
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      # USD per API call
  max_per_pipeline: 25.00   # USD per full production
  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.