explainer-video-from-coursework

Turn a directory of structured coursework notes into a narrated, animated explainer-video series.

A skill for AI coding agents — Claude Code, Codex, DeepSeek Harness and Antigravity. Point it at a folder of course notes: it plans the series, writes the narration, synthesizes the audio, authors the visuals, then renders and assembles finished MP4s with YouTube-ready chapters and captions.

Its planner does not merely invent titles — it proves completeness: every content-bearing section is assigned to a video or classified as navigation (0 orphaned) before any expensive stage runs.

The pipeline

Stage 0 (/inputs) collects the two things only you can decide — the source notes directory, and where the finished videos land.

#	stage	what it does	cost
1	/plan	decompose the notes, prove coverage	free, local
2	/enrich	retitle and curate (skip / merge)	free, agent
3	/script	write the narration segments	free, agent
4	/audio	TTS → a measured timeline	network — spends the Gemini key
5	/scene	author the visuals (diagram / code / svg)	free, agent
6	/publish	YouTube chapters + captions	free — no TTS, no Chromium
7	/render	frames → H.264 MP4	local CPU
8	/assemble	per-segment parts → the finished cut	local CPU

Stages 1–2 run once for the whole directory; stages 3–8 run once per video. One video end to end is a valid stopping point — a pilot, or a single-target run.

Install

Claude Code

claude plugin marketplace add akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video
claude plugin install explainer-video-from-coursework@akshaydev17

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video
codex plugin add explainer-video-from-coursework@akshaydev17

DeepSeek Harness

dsh plugin --profile web add explainer-video-from-coursework

Antigravity

agy plugin install https://github.com/akshayDev17/ai-explainer-video

All four commands install the same npm package — one package, three manifest surfaces, one copy of the nine skills. How each platform reads it, and how to publish, is in DISTRIBUTION.md.

Prerequisites

• Node ≥ 22 — render.mjs relies on the built-in global WebSocket.
• ffmpeg + ffprobe — H.264 encoding, muxing, and duration measurement.
• Headless Chromium — npx playwright install --with-deps --only-shell.
• A Gemini API key — for TTS. It lives in the OS secret store (macOS Keychain · Linux secret-tool · Windows Credential Manager) under the service name gemini-tts — never in env, never in a plaintext file. A free key: https://aistudio.google.com/apikey.

The tools fail loud on a missing prerequisite rather than quietly producing a broken video. Per-OS commands and citations: SETUP.md.

Use it

Invoke the skill with the notes directory:

/explainer-video-from-coursework path/to/your/notes/

You get one .mp4 per video, plus description.md (blurb and a paste-ready chapter block) and captions.srt, copied to the destination you chose — by default videos/ beside the source. Scratch stays in a gitignored out/<name>/<NN>/.

Run every command from the project (where out/ lives), not from the skill's install folder. The tools self-locate their own tools/, src/ and scenes/, so only the work and scratch paths depend on the current directory.

Repository layout

plugin.json                              Agent Plugins manifest (Codex, Antigravity)
.claude-plugin/                          plugin.json + marketplace.json (Claude Code)
.agents/plugins/                         marketplace.json (Codex)
cordis.patch.yml + lib/index.js          DSH bundle plugin (serves this package's skills/)
skills/explainer-video-from-coursework/  the main skill: SKILL.md, tools/, src/, scenes/, SETUP.md
skills/craft-video-<stage>/              the 8 stage skills, separately invocable
DISTRIBUTION.md                          publish + install commands

Docs

file	what it covers
SKILL.md	the contract of record — the agent's entry point
SETUP.md	cited, per-OS machine prerequisites
ARCHITECTURE.md	how the pieces fit together
PIPELINE.md	the stage-by-stage pipeline
ROADMAP.md	design record and open work
DISTRIBUTION.md	publishing, and installing on each platform
RELEASING.md	how a release works — a tag, not a command line

License

MIT — see LICENSE.