MiguelBai/yanni-video-editor

Paper cut reel editor

Yanni is a nutrition, peptides and physique creator. He records himself talking. This skill turns the raw take into a finished 1080x1920 reel in the style of the reference he picked (a pharmacology explainer): his face on camera, intercut with crumpled paper "explainer" scenes, captions on top of everything.

The user barely uses Claude. Do the whole job yourself, keep messages short and plain, and only stop to ask when you truly need something from him (a study link, a missing video). Never show raw JSON or long logs to him.

Read references/style.md once before your first plan. It is the measured style bible; this file is the procedure.

E below means <this skill's base directory>/engine.

0. Preflight

• ~/.yanni-editor/brand.json missing, or ffmpeg/whisper-cli/node missing: run the setup skill first, then come back.
• Find the video. If he dragged a file in, the path is in his message. If not, ask once: "Drag the video file into this window and press Enter."
• Project folder: <projectsDir from brand.json>/<kebab-case-topic> (for example ~/Movies/Yanni Edits/bpc-157-healing). Pick the slug after the transcript tells you the topic; use untitled-<date> until then and rename after.

1. Prep and transcript

node "$E/prep.mjs" "<raw video>" "<project>"

Normalizes to 1080x1920 30fps at -16 LUFS and writes build/raw.transcript.txt (phrases with timestamps). Read that file.

2. Jump cut (and bad takes)

Look for retakes: the same sentence said twice, a false start, "wait let me redo that". Keep the LAST take, remove the earlier ones by raw time range. Also remove clear junk at the start and end (him reaching for the phone).

node "$E/cut.mjs" "<project>" --remove "3.10-7.85,40.2-44.0"
# no retakes: node "$E/cut.mjs" "<project>"

Pauses are cut from the audio itself (anything quieter than -35 dB for 0.3s or more). If he sounds rushed, use --gap 0.45; if the room is noisy and nothing gets cut, try --db -30. Output: build/head.mp4 and build/transcript.txt in cut time. All beat times from here on are cut times.

Read build/transcript.txt. Whisper gets names wrong; write the fixes into replace in edit.json (a word for word map, case insensitive), for example {"BPC157": "BPC-157", "tren": "Tren"}.

3. Plan the beats (write it down before touching assets)

Write build/plan.md: one row per beat with cut time range, the spoken line, FACE or PAPER, and for paper what is on screen. Rules from the reference:

• Open on PAPER. The first 2 to 4 seconds are a paper scene with a black header tag naming the topic and the main object dropping in. This is the hook.
• The first FACE beat carries the name stamp ("stamp": 0.2).
• Alternate. Never two paper beats back to back without face between them unless the spoken thought clearly continues (then make it one paper beat with several shots). Paper beats 2 to 5 s, face beats 1.5 to 5 s. Aim for paper on 45 to 55 percent of the runtime. build.mjs prints paperShare.
• What goes on paper: the moment he names a compound, food, supplement, body part or study; says a number; describes a mechanism. What stays on face: opinions, warnings, conclusions, jokes, the call to action. The face is the trust; the paper is the proof.
• Inside a paper beat the shot changes every 1.2 to 2.5 s. whip to the next study page, push to add the stat or figure under the current card, zoom to swap objects. A paper beat with one static shot for 4 s is dead.
• Long face stretch (more than ~4 s with a jump cut inside): split it into two face beats and give the second "zoom": 1.12 (a punch in hides the cut).

4. Gather the visuals

Put everything in build/assets/. Write build/assets/credits.txt with the source of every image (find_images prints license and page).

Cut out objects (vial, syringe, chicken breast, egg, dumbbell, brain, liver):

node "$E/find_images.mjs" "syringe" "<project>/build/cand" --n 6
# LOOK at the candidates (Read them), pick the clearest object on a plain background
node "$E/cutout.mjs" "<project>/build/cand/syringe-2.jpg" "<project>/build/assets/syringe.png"

Then LOOK at the cutout. Background removal fails on glass, clear plastic and busy backgrounds. If it failed, try another candidate, or use the photo as a card instead of a cutout. Anatomy reads best as old engravings: search "Gray's anatomy " and use "mono": true for the grayscale look the reference uses. If he has his own product photos, prefer those.

Study pages (the backbone of this style):

• Only REAL studies. Ask him for the link if he cites one and you cannot find it with certainty. Never invent a study, a journal page, a figure or a number. Health claims on a fake screenshot can hurt people and his account.
• Screenshot via Europe PMC (PubMed blocks headless browsers):

  node "$E/webshot.mjs" "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/<PMID>" "<project>/build/cand/study.png"
  

  LOOK at it. Then crop the part he is talking about: the title block for "a 2017 study from Oslo...", the exact results sentence or figure for the claim:

  ffmpeg -v error -y -i study.png -vf "crop=W:H:X:Y" -frames:v 1 "<project>/build/assets/study-title.png"
  

  The screenshot is 2x scale, so crops are sharp. Keep cards readable: crop tight, a card is at most ~820 px wide on screen.
• Journal pages (ScienceDirect, Wiley) often block too. If the screenshot is a captcha or blank, ask him to screenshot the page on his Mac (Cmd+Shift+4) and drop the file in.

Stat numbers (stat): only numbers he says out loud, word for word.

5. Write build/edit.json and build

Full format and every option: references/edit-json.md. Minimal shape:

{
  "title": "bpc-157 healing",
  "video": "head.mp4",
  "transcript": "transcript.json",
  "replace": { "bpc157": "BPC-157" },
  "beats": [
    { "type": "paper", "start": 0, "end": 3.2, "header": "Does BPC-157 Heal Tendons?",
      "shots": [
        { "at": 0, "enter": "drop", "items": [ { "kind": "cutout", "src": "assets/vial.png", "label": "BPC-157" } ] },
        { "at": 1.6, "enter": "zoom", "items": [ { "kind": "cutout", "src": "assets/tendon.png", "mono": true } ] }
      ] },
    { "type": "face", "start": 3.2, "end": 6.4, "stamp": 0.2 },
    { "type": "paper", "start": 6.4, "end": 10.1,
      "shots": [
        { "at": 0, "enter": "cut", "items": [ { "kind": "card", "src": "assets/study-title.png" } ] },
        { "at": 1.8, "enter": "push", "items": [ { "kind": "stat", "text": "40 rats", "enter": "pop" } ] },
        { "at": 2.7, "enter": "whip", "items": [ { "kind": "card", "src": "assets/study-result.png" } ] }
      ] }
  ]
}

Anything not covered by a paper beat shows his face. Then:

node "$E/build.mjs" "<project>/build/edit.json"
cd "<project>/build" && npx -y hyperframes@latest check

check must say Check passed. Warnings about sub-compositions, track density and duplicate images are expected for this format; errors are not.

6. Look before you show him

cd "<project>/build" && npx -y hyperframes@latest snapshot --at <one time inside every beat>

Read snapshots/contact-sheet-*.jpg. Check: every paper beat has something on it, nothing overlaps the captions, cards are readable, cutouts have clean edges, the stamp is on his first face beat, the captions are spelled right. Fix and rebuild until it is right. He should never be the one to find a broken frame.

7. Preview and render

Render a draft so he can watch it on his phone or Mac:

cd "<project>/build" && npx -y hyperframes@latest render --quality draft --output "../out/<slug>-draft.mp4"
open "<project>/out"

Tell him in two lines: where the file is, and "tell me anything you want changed, like 'make the study at 0:12 bigger' or 'more face in the middle'."

For changes: edit build/edit.json, rebuild, check, snapshot, re-render. For the final version:

npx -y hyperframes@latest render --quality high --output "../out/<slug>.mp4"

Verify the file exists, plays, and its duration matches build/head.mp4 (ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of csv=p=0 <file>). Over ~60 MB, re-encode for upload: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 21 -preset slow -c:a copy out.mp4.

If he wants to tweak things by hand, npx -y hyperframes@latest preview in the build folder opens HyperFrames Studio in the browser with the whole timeline.

Hard rules

1. Never fabricate evidence. No invented studies, numbers, figures, quotes or before/after images. If the audio claims something you cannot source, keep that line on his face and tell him which line needs a source.
2. Captions match what he SAID, not what the script said. Fix spelling only.
3. One accent color, from brand.json. Red stat text, red stamp line, nothing else colored except the images themselves.
4. Do not restyle the system per video. Fonts, paper, caption look and motion live in engine/runtime/. A video gets its own edit.json, never its own CSS. If he asks for a global style change, change the runtime once.
5. Timing is cut time, from build/transcript.txt, never raw time.