Changelog Video

Changelog → Branded Video

Input: a changelog .md (themes + items, like the weekly HyperFrames digest). Output: a lint-clean, seam-gate-green HyperFrames project in projects/active/weekly-changelog-<range>/. Render only when asked.

Load first, non-negotiable: motion-doctrine (+ cut-the-curve, oversized-cursor if a cursor appears, seam-craft) and captions-overlay. This skill supplies the changelog-specific pipeline; the doctrine supplies the motion law.

The prime directive: visualize, don't list

Every theme is illustrated by an animated mock of the actual UI or a faithful analog acting out the change in experience — never text bullets. Route every theme/item through references/visualization-registry.md BEFORE writing the script; the registry decides ui-recreate / ui-analog / terminal / checklist. Text checklist is the LAST resort, reserved for genuinely non-visual items (reliability fix lists).

Pipeline

1 · Parse + editorial cut

• Extract: week range, headline stats (releases, commits), themes, items.
• Budget: 45-60s total. Title ≤2s, outro ≤3.5s, 4 themes ≈ 9-12s each.
• Per theme keep ONE hero visualization + at most 3 spoken items. Everything else exists only as the outro's "full digest" pointer. Cutting is the job: a changelog with 30 items still yields ≤14 spoken beats.
• Order themes by story: marquee feature → product surface → performance → reliability (the digest usually already reads this way).

2 · Visualization routing

For each theme, pick the surface from references/visualization-registry.md and write one line: theme → surface → the 2-4 sequenced actions the mock performs, each tied to a script phrase. If no registry surface fits and no faithful analog exists, it's a checklist scene — don't invent fake UI for something we can't represent honestly.

3 · Two-layer script (spoken vs display)

Write the script as token lines per references/script-voice.md: conversational register, every technical term carrying a spoken phonetic form from references/lexicon.json while display keeps standard spelling. Captions show display; the VO reads spoken. Any term not in the lexicon: STOP and ask the user how it's pronounced, then add it to the lexicon. Save as script-tokens.json in the project.

4 · VO — Annie (HeyGen, pinned)

# spoken-layer text only; words JSON = ground-truth timestamps of the SPOKEN text
# Repo-native path: the changelog-video skill runs from the hyperframes repo root,
# so it uses the tracked hyperframes-media TTS helper directly (no `npx hyperframes
# skills` install step). If you've copied the skill into another repo, swap in
# your own path to the media-use / hyperframes-media heygen-tts.mjs.
node skills/hyperframes-media/scripts/heygen-tts.mjs ./vo-spoken.txt \
  -o voiceover.mp3 --words vo-words.json \
  --voice 330290724a1b470fb63153f34d4c0183   # Annie — lifelike (do not substitute)

Requires heygen CLI ≥0.3.0 authenticated (heygen auth login --oauth). Then align spoken timestamps back to display tokens:

node <SKILL_DIR>/scripts/align-captions.mjs \
  --tokens script-tokens.json --words vo-words.json --out captions.json

captions.json is the caption-rail input (display spelling, spoken timing). The aligner prints MISMATCH warnings — resolve every one before building (usually a lexicon spelling the TTS renders as multiple words). The audio is the clock: all beat times come from vo-words.json; a VO regen re-opens every seam.

5 · Build

Follow references/build-spec.md exactly: brand tokens + fonts (bundled in <SKILL_DIR>/assets/), the animated background encode, scene scaffold, chrome, caption rail, one rationed green moment per scene. Then the doctrine order: ledger.json (all ordinary seams cut-the-curve LEFT) → seam-stamp → internal beats on VO words → seam-gate verify.

6 · Gates (all green before presenting)

1. bun run --cwd packages/cli hyperframes check (or the installed hyperframes CLI from the repo-local skills/hyperframes-cli/ skill) — 0 errors (contrast: dim text ≥ .66 alpha). Do NOT reach for npx hyperframes@latest; the tracked repo-local CLI is the source of truth for the composition contract this skill produces against.
2. seam-gate.mjs verify — 0 fail.
3. Restart the preview server (it caches the bundle), spot-check 3-4 beats via __player.seek on the raw comp page.
4. Do NOT render unless the user asks. After a requested render, verify frames from the MP4 (ffmpeg -ss <t> … -frames:v 1): captions present, background video not black, no tiny/frozen frames.

Project layout

projects/active/weekly-changelog-<range>/
├── index.html            # single-doc master (scenes as slides, stamped seams)
├── ledger.json           # vector ledger (seam-stamp input)
├── script-tokens.json    # two-layer script (source of truth for VO + captions)
├── vo-spoken.txt         # generated: spoken layer, one line
├── voiceover.mp3 + vo-words.json + captions.json
├── bgm.mp3               # copy from <SKILL_DIR>/assets/bgm.mp3 (the house track) unless the user supplies one
└── assets/fonts/ + assets/bg-pattern-<dur>s.mp4

Anti-patterns