Recording Product Demo

Recording Product Demo

Produce a styled, narrated product demo video for any repo with a web UI — entirely from scripts, re-recordable in ~10 minutes of machine time once the narration is locked.

The model: the agent discovers once, then everything is code. On the first run you (the agent) work out how to boot the app, what to show, and what to say — and capture all of it into a committed demo/ directory in the host repo. Re-runs (after any UI change) are fully scripted: boot → record → assemble → publish, no improvisation.

Pipeline Overview

Phase 0  Discover & boot    → agent reads the repo, writes demo/boot.sh + demo.config.json, boots, health-checks
Phase 1  Prep               → demo data seeded, auth captured (login.cjs), pages probed (scrape-text.cjs)
Phase 2  Script             → scene table + narration text (demo/segments.json)
Phase 3  Narration          → ONE-SHOT TTS → STT word timestamps → split per scene (timeline.json)
Phase 4  Screen recording   → one continuous Playwright take, time-locked to narration (demo/blocks.cjs)
Phase 5  Cards & assembly   → branded title/agenda/end cards + ffmpeg assembly (assemble.cjs)
Phase 6  Publish            → out/publish kit: faststart MP4, 720p, poster, captions.srt, embed snippet; optional upload

Resources in this skill:

What the host repo ends up with (committed, except out/):

demo/
  demo.config.json   # the contract: app/auth/brand/voice/anonymize/record/publish
  boot.sh            # captured boot recipe — starts app + deps, waits until healthy
  segments.json      # narration, one entry per scene
  blocks.cjs         # the Playwright journey, one block per scene
  cards/             # title/agenda/end HTML, branded from the templates
  out/               # build artifacts — add to .gitignore

Prerequisites (check before starting, tell the user what's missing): ElevenLabs API key (ELEVENLABS_API_KEY — TTS and STT are both load-bearing; the word timestamps drive the scene split), ffmpeg + ffprobe, Node 18+ with Playwright + Chromium (npm i -D playwright && npx playwright install chromium in the host repo), Python 3.

Phase 0 — Discover & Boot (agent work, captured as code)

1. Read the repo: README, package.json scripts, docker-compose*.yml, Makefile, Procfile. Determine how to start the app and its dependencies locally, which port it serves, and what visible text proves it's up.
2. Write demo/boot.sh: an idempotent script that starts everything (background-safe), then polls app.baseUrl + healthPath until readyText appears (with a timeout that fails loudly). This is the captured boot recipe — re-runs never re-derive it.
3. Write demo/demo.config.json from templates/demo.config.example.json. Fill app, brand (name, primary color, and pronunciation — see Phase 2), voice, record. Leave anonymize.enabled: false unless the user wants it.
4. Run boot.sh, verify health, and node scripts/scrape-text.cjs <baseUrl>/... over the main surfaces to learn the real on-screen strings.
5. Already-deployed instance? Set app.baseUrl to it and skip boot — everything downstream works identically.

Phase 1 — Prep (demo data + auth)

1. Demo data: a demo over an empty app is dead on arrival. Use the repo's own seeds/fixtures (npm run seed, rails db:seed, SQL fixtures) or create realistic content through the app/API. Prefer data that tells one coherent story (a project with history beats ten empty stubs).
2. Auth:
   • auth.mode: "none" — app has no login locally (or a dev bypass). Best case; prefer enabling a dev bypass over recording login flows.
   • auth.mode: "storageState" — cookie/localStorage sessions. Capture once: node scripts/login.cjs --url <loginUrl> --expect "<logged-in-only text>".
   • auth.mode: "profile" — SPAs whose auth token lives in IndexedDB (e.g. Firebase) render logged-out from a storageState file; the recorder must reuse the persistent Chrome profile that login.cjs created, which carries IndexedDB too.
3. login.cjs gotchas (each cost real debugging):
   • --expect must be an authenticated-only string — logged-out marketing pages often contain the same words as app pages, which makes the capture succeed before you log in.
   • Google sign-in blocks plain Playwright browsers ("This browser or app may not be secure"); the script launches real Chrome with the automation fingerprint disabled, which passes.
   • storageState only captures localStorage for origins visited in that session; if the app keeps critical state there (selected org/workspace), inject it into the state file afterwards.
4. Always probe before recording: scrape-text.cjs with the captured auth — confirm the expected logged-in content renders headless.

Phase 2 — Script

1. Ask the user: target length (~3 min default), audience, language, which features to show.
2. Write demo/segments.json (copy templates/segments.example.json): one entry per scene beat, [{"slug": "hook", "text": "..."}, ...]. Budget ~150 words/min — and note pacing differs by TTS model (eleven_v3 runs noticeably slower/more expressive than v2 for the same text).
3. Narration rules (these prevent re-recording):
   • Use the product UI's own labels verbatim — don't paraphrase what's on screen.
   • Brand pronunciation: TTS mangles coined names. Generate once, LISTEN, and if mispronounced write the brand phonetically in segments.json (brand.pronunciation records the chosen spelling) while cards keep the styled wordmark. Re-check when switching voice or model.
   • De-number drift-prone dashboard figures ("more than fifty…") — live data changes between scripting and recording and will contradict the voiceover. Re-scrape on recording day if exact numbers must stay.
   • Spell out abbreviations you want spoken ("pull request", not "PR"); letter-acronyms ("API", "AI") read fine.
4. Run a copy-review pass (subagent) over the narration before spending TTS credits.

Phase 3 — Narration

node scripts/tts-oneshot.cjs --segments demo/segments.json --config demo/demo.config.json
python3 scripts/split-narration.py --segments demo/segments.json

• Why one-shot: generating clips separately (even with previous/next-text stitching) produces stuttered clip starts. One continuous TTS request has exactly one start; the splitter cuts it at paragraph boundaries using ElevenLabs STT word-level timestamps + fuzzy alignment (STT rewrites brand words, so exact matching fails).
• Verify every clip start by transcription (the splitter prints the command). Boundary snaps can land one word off when the voice barely pauses between paragraphs (40 ms happens) — nudge the cut at the midpoint of the correct gap in narration-full.stt.json.
• v3 short-prompt instability: eleven_v3 can break up/crack on short standalone prompts (card VOs). Fix without dropping to v2: put a throwaway warm-up sentence as segment 0 in the same generation, split it off, discard it.
• timeline.json holds the scene boundaries — the recorder reads it directly.

Phase 4 — Screen Recording

Write demo/blocks.cjs (copy templates/blocks.example.cjs): one block per narration segment, anchored on the real strings you scraped in Phase 0. Then:

node scripts/record-demo.cjs --config demo/demo.config.json    # ~real-time: 3-min demo = 3-min run

Hard-won rules baked into the framework — keep them when writing blocks:

• Playwright never upscales video — recordVideo.size larger than the viewport letterboxes the content. Record at viewport 1536×864; the 1080p upscale happens in ffmpeg (assemble.cjs).
• networkidle never fires on pages holding an SSE/websocket stream. Use domcontentloaded + explicit element waits.
• The framework sets page.setDefaultTimeout(6000) and glideTo misses cost ~2s and a WARN — a missing element must never eat 30s of a time-locked take.
• Call setT0() exactly when narration should start; every block ends with await until(B[i]). A take with WARN: block overran lines is garbage — tighten and re-run.
• Anonymisation (anonymize in config, --no-anon to disable): rewrites identifying text and swaps operator face avatars/initials live during capture via MutationObserver — the recording is anonymised, the app data untouched.
• The take's t0 and boundaries land in out/take-meta.json — nothing is hand-copied downstream.

Phase 5 — Cards & Assembly

1. Copy templates/{title,agenda,end}.html into demo/cards/, set the BRAND block (color, wordmark, copy). No invented contact details on the end card — ask the user what to print.
2. Render: npx playwright screenshot --viewport-size=1920,1080 --wait-for-timeout=1500 file://$PWD/demo/cards/title.html demo/cards/title.png (repeat for agenda/end).
3. Optional card VOs (with the v3 warm-up trick): out/voice/welcome.mp3 (spoken welcome over the title card — picked up automatically if present) and out/voice/intro.mp3 (agenda walkthrough, required unless --no-cards).
4. Assemble — one command, everything from metadata:

node scripts/assemble.cjs --build demo
# → out/main.mp4, out/final.mp4, out/frames/grid.png

5. Verify: eyeball out/frames/grid.png (every scene on the right page), play the head and tail. Don't chase a glitch at the very start of playback — VLC/GNOME Videos stutter the first ~0.5s on file-open; if it's clean after seeking to 0, the file is fine (confirm with ffmpeg -t 6 -i final.mp4 -af astats -f null - — flat factor 0 means no dropouts).

Phase 6 — Publish

node scripts/publish.cjs --build demo

Builds out/publish/: faststart demo.mp4 (upload this to YouTube), demo-720p.mp4 (self-hosting / LinkedIn native upload), poster.jpg, captions.srt (from the STT timestamps — social feeds autoplay muted, captions are non-negotiable), embed.html, and PUBLISH.md with channel-specific guidance (incl.: post LinkedIn video natively, never as a YouTube link). If publish.upload is configured (gcs / s3 / youtube — see PUBLISH.md for the one-time OAuth provisioning), it uploads too.

Pre-flight Checklist

• demo/boot.sh boots from cold and the health check passes
• Demo data tells a coherent story; auth probe renders logged-in content headless
• Narration reviewed: UI labels verbatim, brand pronunciation listened-to, drift-prone numbers removed
• demo/segments.json is the single source of narration text
• Every narration clip start verified by STT transcription
• Recorder take has ZERO WARN lines
• Frame grid eyeballed: every scene on the right page
• demo/out/ is gitignored; auth state/profile stays in ~/.cache (never committed)
• Publish kit built; captions attached wherever the video is uploaded

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