hyperframes-cli

Write HTML. Render video. Built for agents.

Hyperframes is an open-source video rendering framework that lets you create, preview, and render HTML-based video compositions — with first-class support for AI agents.

Quick Start

Option 1: With an AI coding agent (recommended)

Install the HyperFrames skills, then describe the video you want:

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

This teaches your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Codex) how to write correct compositions and GSAP animations. In Claude Code, the skills register as slash commands — invoke /hyperframes to author compositions, /hyperframes-cli for CLI commands, and /gsap for animation help.

For Codex specifically, the same skills are also exposed as an OpenAI Codex plugin — sparse-install just the plugin surface:

codex plugin marketplace add heygen-com/hyperframes --sparse .codex-plugin --sparse skills --sparse assets

Try it: example prompts

Copy any of these into your agent to get started. The /hyperframes prefix loads the skill context explicitly so you get correct output the first time.

Cold start — describe what you want:

Using /hyperframes, create a 10-second product intro with a fade-in title, a background video, and background music.

Warm start — turn existing context into a video:

Take a look at this GitHub repo https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes and explain its uses and architecture to me using /hyperframes.

Summarize the attached PDF into a 45-second pitch video using /hyperframes.

Turn this CSV into an animated bar chart race using /hyperframes.

Format-specific:

Make a 9:16 TikTok-style hook video about [topic] using /hyperframes, with bouncy captions synced to a TTS narration.

Iterate — talk to the agent like a video editor:

Make the title 2x bigger, swap to dark mode, and add a fade-out at the end.

Add a lower third at 0:03 with my name and title.

The agent handles scaffolding, animation, and rendering. See the prompting guide for more patterns.

Option 2: Start a project manually

npx hyperframes init my-video
cd my-video
npx hyperframes preview      # preview in browser (live reload)
npx hyperframes render       # render to MP4

hyperframes init installs skills automatically, so you can hand off to your AI agent at any point.

Requirements: Node.js >= 22, FFmpeg

Why Hyperframes?

• HTML-native — compositions are HTML files with data attributes. No React, no proprietary DSL.
• AI-first — agents already speak HTML. The CLI is non-interactive by default, designed for agent-driven workflows.
• Deterministic rendering — same input = identical output. Built for automated pipelines.
• Frame Adapter pattern — bring your own animation runtime (GSAP, Lottie, CSS, Three.js).

Hyperframes vs Remotion

Hyperframes is inspired by Remotion — we used Remotion at HeyGen in production, learned a ton from it, and kept attribution comments in the source for the patterns it pioneered (Chrome launch flags, image2pipe → FFmpeg streaming, frame buffering). Both tools drive headless Chrome and both are deterministic. They differ on one decision: what the primary author writes. Remotion's bet is React components; Hyperframes' bet is HTML.

	Hyperframes	Remotion
Authoring	HTML + CSS + GSAP	React components (TSX)
Build step	None; index.html plays as-is	Required (bundler)
Library-clock animations (GSAP, Anime.js, Motion One)	Seekable, frame-accurate	Plays at wall-clock during render
Arbitrary HTML / CSS passthrough	Paste and animate	Rewrite as JSX
Distributed rendering	Single-machine today	Lambda, production-ready

Licensing: fully open source vs source-available

Hyperframes is completely open source under Apache 2.0 — an OSI-approved license. Use it commercially at any scale, with no per-render fees, no seat caps, no company-size thresholds.

Remotion is source-available, not open source. The code is on GitHub under a custom Remotion License that requires a paid company license above small-team thresholds. It's a great product with a real team behind it — but if open-source licensing matters to you (OSI compliance, redistribution rights, no per-use fees), that's a first-order decision point.

Full write-up with benchmarks, an honest list of where each tool wins, and a GSAP side-by-side: Hyperframes vs Remotion guide.

How It Works

Define your video as HTML with data attributes:

<div id="stage" data-composition-id="my-video" data-start="0" data-width="1920" data-height="1080">
  <video
    id="clip-1"
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="5"
    data-track-index="0"
    src="intro.mp4"
    muted
    playsinline
  ></video>
  <img
    id="overlay"
    class="clip"
    data-start="2"
    data-duration="3"
    data-track-index="1"
    src="logo.png"
  />
  <audio
    id="bg-music"
    data-start="0"
    data-duration="9"
    data-track-index="2"
    data-volume="0.5"
    src="music.wav"
  ></audio>
</div>

Preview instantly in the browser. Render to MP4 locally or in Docker.

Catalog

50+ ready-to-use blocks and components — social overlays, shader transitions, data visualizations, and cinematic effects:

npx hyperframes add flash-through-white   # shader transition
npx hyperframes add instagram-follow      # social overlay
npx hyperframes add data-chart            # animated chart

Browse the full catalog at hyperframes.heygen.com/catalog.

Documentation

Full documentation at hyperframes.heygen.com/introduction — Quickstart | Guides | API Reference | Catalog

Packages

Package	Description
hyperframes	CLI — create, preview, lint, and render compositions
@hyperframes/core	Types, parsers, generators, linter, runtime, frame adapters
@hyperframes/engine	Seekable page-to-video capture engine (Puppeteer + FFmpeg)
@hyperframes/producer	Full rendering pipeline (capture + encode + audio mix)
@hyperframes/studio	Browser-based composition editor UI
@hyperframes/player	Embeddable <hyperframes-player> web component
@hyperframes/shader-transitions	WebGL shader transitions for compositions

Skills

HyperFrames ships skills that teach AI agents framework-specific patterns that generic docs don't cover.

npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

Skill	What it teaches
hyperframes	HTML composition authoring, captions, TTS, audio-reactive animation, transitions
hyperframes-cli	CLI commands: init, lint, preview, render, transcribe, tts, doctor
hyperframes-registry	Block and component installation via hyperframes add
website-to-hyperframes	Capture a URL and turn it into a video — full website-to-video pipeline
gsap	GSAP animation API, timelines, easing, ScrollTrigger, plugins, React/Vue/Svelte, performance

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

Apache 2.0