I just wanted to stop making showcase videos by hand
I’ll be honest: I don’t enjoy making videos about the things I build. Every demo or showcase clip is the same chore — screen-record something, fumble the narration, wrestle a timeline editor, then redo it all when a detail changes. The project is the fun part. The video is the tax.
So I tried to automate the tax away with Claude Code.
The first piece I found was Remotion — it lets you build videos as code: PowerPoint-style slides, but with real motion, voiceover, and transitions. Then I found an open-source Claude skill, promo-video by buildatscale-tv, that already wired Remotion into a “generate a promo” workflow.
Great starting point — with one gap that mattered to me: it didn’t really understand the project it was filming. It would render something slick without first scoping what the project is, who it’s for, or what story it should tell. It looked good and said little.
So I forked it and added the one thing it was missing: design thinking. Empathize, define, ideate — before a single frame is drawn. The skill interrogates the project first, and only then turns that understanding into a video.
That fork became HVE Spielberg — an open-source Claude Code skill that turns your app into a cinematic, branded product video from a single command. (Yes, named after the director. 🎬)
🎬 The repository lives at github.com/nebrass/hve-spielberg (MIT licensed).
What it actually is
HVE Spielberg is not a one-shot “prompt in, video out” slot machine. It’s a six-phase pipeline with design thinking at the front and a human approval checkpoint between every phase. You stay in control the whole way; the skill does the heavy lifting.
Here is the pipeline, end to end:
- Discovery — Design thinking before a single pixel is drawn. The skill scans your codebase and then interrogates the things that actually decide whether a video lands: who is watching, what they care about, what they should do next, and what they should feel.
- Storytelling — A narrative arc, a scene-by-scene storyboard, and a voiceover script aligned to the visuals. Story first, motion second.
- Capture — Chrome DevTools navigates your live application and screenshots every key view. No mockups, no fake UIs — the real product.
- Design — It extracts your brand DNA (palette, typography, components) and turns it into Remotion components. Remotion is “React for video,” so the whole composition is real, version-controllable code.
- Production — Code-driven motion graphics: spring physics, metallic transitions, and a library of best-practice animation patterns that keep things feeling premium rather than busy.
- Audio & Render — ElevenLabs voiceover, Whisper-verified timing so the narration lands on the right frames, Creative-Commons music from Freesound, and an
ffmpegfinal cut into a broadcast-ready 1080p MP4.
The philosophy that separates it from the generic tools: it thinks before it renders. Design thinking is the one capability no template-based AI video generator has, so it’s the thing I led with.
Two modes
Not every video has the same job, so HVE Spielberg ships in two modes:
| Mode | Structure | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Promo | Hook → Pain → Solution → Features → CTA | Launches, marketing, ads |
| Showcase | Intro → Walkthrough → Highlights → Closer | Portfolios, demos, case studies |
The proof: it made its own trailer
Here’s the part I’m proud of. The launch video for HVE Spielberg was made by HVE Spielberg — same tool you’d use to launch your own product. Real Chrome DevTools captures, real Remotion code, a real ElevenLabs voiceover, a real Freesound score, rendered in about thirty minutes of compute.
No staged screens. No “representative” footage. The pipeline turned around on itself, and the closing line of that video became the whole premise of the project:
The next great video is one command away.
Try it
Installing it is one line, via the Claude Code Skills CLI:
| |
Then, from any project you want a video for:
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…and follow the prompts. Each of the six phases pauses for your approval before moving on, so you can steer the story, the brand, and the pacing instead of accepting whatever the machine decided.
It’s free, open source, and MIT licensed — built on Claude Code, Remotion, ElevenLabs, and Freesound, and on the conviction that craft and automation aren’t enemies. It stands on the shoulders of promo-video by buildatscale-tv, which I forked and extended with design thinking, Chrome DevTools capture, Remotion composition, and Freesound music search.
If you build developer tools, SaaS, or anything with a UI worth showing off — or you just hate hand-making demo videos as much as I do — the next great video really is one command away. I’d love to see what you make with it. 🚀
🔗 Repository: github.com/nebrass/hve-spielberg