general-video — general composition authoring
Confirm the route before you build. This is the fallback for custom composition authoring. If the input clearly fits a specialized workflow, prefer it: marketed product →
/product-launch-video; general site →/website-to-video; topic explainer →/faceless-explainer; GitHub PR →/pr-to-video; existing footage →/embedded-captions·/graphic-overlays; short unnarrated motion graphic →/motion-graphics; Remotion port →/remotion-to-hyperframes. Out of scope: live / at-render-time data, NLE-style editing of a finished video, or producing footage HyperFrames can't capture. Unsure? Read/hyperframesfirst.
Build exactly what was asked. A title card is a title card — not a title card + three supporting scenes + ambient music + captions. If extra scenes or elements would genuinely improve the piece, propose them; don't add them silently. For small edits (fix a color, adjust one duration, add one element), skip the planning steps and go straight to the build.
Approach
Discovery — open-ended requests only
For vague, exploratory requests ("make something for our brand", "a cool intro") — understand intent before picking colors:
- Audience — who watches? developers / executives / general consumers?
- Platform — where does it play? social (15s) / website hero / product demo / internal?
- Priority — what matters most? motion quality / content accuracy / brand fidelity / speed?
- Variations — one best shot, or 2-3 meaningfully different options (different pacing, energy, or structure — not just color swaps)?
For specific requests ("add a title card", "fix the timing on scene 3"), skip discovery.
Step 1 — Design system → hyperframes-creative
Establish the visual identity first. If the project has a design spec, read it (precedence frame.md → design.md → DESIGN.md; treat it as brand truth — exact colors, fonts, constraints).
If no spec exists, you MUST read BOTH hyperframes-creative/references/house-style.md AND hyperframes-creative/references/video-composition.md before choosing any color or font. house-style.md gives the "interpret the prompt / generate real content" opener, lazy-default list, and layer recipe; video-composition.md gives the video-medium density / scale / foreground detailing (data bars, registration marks, monospace metadata, "8-10 elements, two the user didn't ask for") that separates "produced" from "generated." Reading only one is the most common miss — video-composition.md is the one agents skip, and it is exactly the one that prevents flat, centered, web-page-looking output. Do not self-invent a palette and skip these; crossing into hyperframes-creative is mandatory here, not an optional branch. From there, also pull a named style/mood → references/visual-styles.md, or the interactive picker → references/design-picker.md, as needed. The spec/style defines the brand, not the composition rules.
Find the angle (vague brief, no spec): before picking colors, write ONE sentence — what does this name/word/topic evoke, and what visual world (metaphor, setting, instrument, motif) expresses it? E.g. a cybersecurity tool → vault doors / perimeter scan lines / lock tumblers; a meditation app → tide, breath, slow light bloom. Read the meaning of the subject, not just its letters; pick a concrete angle over a literal restyle. This is the cheap substitute for prompt expansion (Step 2) on single-scene pieces, where expansion is correctly skipped — and it is the difference between a designed concept and a generic logo-on-a-gradient.
Step 2 — Prompt expansion → hyperframes-creative
Run for every multi-scene composition (skip for single-scene pieces and trivial edits). Ground the request against the design spec + house style into a consistent intermediate that downstream work reads the same way. See hyperframes-creative/references/prompt-expansion.md.
Step 3 — Plan
Before writing HTML, think at a high level:
- What — the viewer experience: narrative arc, key moments, emotional beats.
- Structure — how many compositions, sub-comp vs inline, which tracks carry video / audio / overlays / captions. For the monolithic-single-file vs modular-sub-comp call, see
hyperframes-core/references/composition-patterns.md§ Two Architectures (rule of thumb: ≥3 hard scene cuts, or any reused scene → modularize; a short single-scene piece stays one file). - Rhythm — name the pattern before implementing (e.g.
fast-fast-SLOW-SHADER-hold); seehyperframes-creative/references/beat-direction.md. - Timing — which clips drive duration, where transitions land, the pacing.
- Layout — build the end state first (see below).
- Animate — then add motion via
hyperframes-animation.
Layout Before Animation
Position every element where it sits at its most visible moment — fully entered, correctly placed, not yet exiting. Write that as static HTML + CSS first. No GSAP yet.
Why: if you position elements at their animated start state (offscreen, scaled to 0, opacity 0) and tween to where you think they land, you are guessing the final layout — overlaps stay invisible until render. Build the end state first and you see and fix layout problems before adding motion.
- Identify the hero frame for each scene — the moment the most elements are simultaneously visible. That is the layout you build.
- Write static CSS for that frame. The content container must fill the scene with padding, not absolute offsets:
.scene-content {
display: flex;
flex-direction: column;
justify-content: center;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;
padding: 120px 160px; /* padding positions content; fills any scene size */
gap: 24px;
box-sizing: border-box;
}
Never use position: absolute; top: Npx on a content container — it overflows when content is taller than the space. Reserve absolute positioning for decoratives.
⚠ The
width/height: 100%above only resolves if every ancestor has a resolved height. The root<div data-composition-id>and any wrapper between it and.scene-contentmust be sized (position: relative; width: 1920px; height: 1080pxon the root — seehyperframes-core→ "Root must be sized"). Skip this and the flex container collapses to ~0, content piles into the top-left corner, and the first glyph clips at x=0 — whilelint/inspectstill report 0 issues. And always keep thepadding(≥80px) on.scene-content: it is the title-safe margin. Never replace it with baregap.
- Add entrances — animate FROM offscreen/invisible TO the CSS position with
gsap.from()(in sub-compositions prefergsap.fromTo()so the start state is explicit; seehyperframes-core/references/sub-compositions.md). The CSS position is ground truth; the tween is the journey to it. - Exits are transition-handled — per the scene-transition rules in
hyperframes-animation/transitions/, only the final scene animates elements out; between scenes the transition IS the exit.
Shared space across time: if element A exits before element B enters in the same area, both still need correct CSS positions for their respective hero frames — timeline ordering keeps them from coexisting, and the layout step catches accidental overlap. Layered glows/shadows and z-stacked depth are intentional overlap; the step is about catching unintentional collisions (two headlines on top of each other, content bleeding off-frame).
Build — delegate to the domain skills
This maps the skill's full surface (see the description) to its references — non-exhaustive; when an intent isn't listed, route through hyperframes-creative (look/concept), hyperframes-animation (motion), hyperframes-core (contract), hyperframes-media (audio/captions). The first row is ADDITIVE — read it AND your intent row, not one or the other.
| Building… | Read first (in order) |
|---|---|
| ALWAYS — every non-trivial piece, on top of your intent row below | hyperframes-creative/references/house-style.md + references/video-composition.md (also gated in Step 1 / HARD-GATE; the "produced, not generated" foreground detailing) |
| Kinetic typography / text-forward | hyperframes-animation/techniques.md (kinetic type) + adapters/gsap-easing-and-stagger.md + rules/kinetic-beat-slam.md |
| Title card / lower-third / overlay / PiP / text-behind-subject | hyperframes-creative/references/composition-patterns.md + (for the centered/sized frame) hyperframes-core → "Root must be sized" |
| Logo / brand-mark reveal | hyperframes-animation/rules/svg-path-draw.md (draw-on) + rules/3d-text-depth-layers.md + rules/scale-swap-transition.md |
| Data / stats / numbers | hyperframes-animation/rules/counting-dynamic-scale.md + rules/stat-bars-and-fills.md + hyperframes-creative/references/data-in-motion.md |
| Product / app / UI demo | hyperframes-animation/rules/3d-page-scroll.md + rules/cursor-click-ripple.md + rules/press-release-spring.md |
| Audio-reactive / music-driven | hyperframes-creative/references/audio-reactive.md (pre-extract bands; map to motion) |
| Narrated / voiceover / captions / subtitles | hyperframes-media (tts, transcribe, caption authoring) → place assets via hyperframes-core |
| Multi-scene / transitions | hyperframes-animation/transitions/overview.md then transitions/catalog.md (you are not done after the overview — the GSAP recipe is in the catalog) |
| Modular / sub-compositions | hyperframes-core/references/composition-patterns.md + references/sub-compositions.md |
Output checklist → hyperframes-cli
-
npx hyperframes lintandnpx hyperframes validatepass (block on results) - design adherence verified if a spec (
frame.md/design.md) exists — checklist inhyperframes-creative/references/design-adherence.md -
npx hyperframes inspectpasses, or every overflow is intentionally marked - contrast warnings addressed; for multi-scene work, review the animation map (
hyperframes-animation/scripts/animation-map.mjs) - deliver the preview; render to MP4 only on explicit request
- surface the preview only at handoff (it is the stable, final preview); don't pop one mid-build — build-phase snapshots are headless
Not this workflow
- A specific product / company / SaaS / website being marketed, launched, or promoted →
/product-launch-video - A concept / topic / article / how-X-works being explained, no product →
/faceless-explainer - A GitHub PR / code change →
/pr-to-video - An existing talking-head video to add captions to →
/embedded-captions - Porting an existing Remotion composition →
/remotion-to-hyperframes - Cutting / editing a finished video file like an NLE → out of scope (HyperFrames composites HTML and media into a deterministic timeline; it does not edit footage)