Setup

Use Claude Code on a Pro plan, leave effort at the default medium, install the HyperFrames skills and check your machine with npx hyperframes doctor. That is enough for 1080p videos under a minute. Everything below explains when to change one of those choices.

Pick a Claude planCopy Anchor Link

Prices checked on 15 Oct 2026.

My pick: start on Pro. Move to Max only when you hit the usage limit every week. Use the API when you run many builds from a script. One side by side test measured 21 to 29 million tokens per short video, about 4 USD each at API prices (luniacllama, single source).

Use Claude Code, not the chat app, for anything beyond a short explainer. The HyperFrames quickstart assumes a coding agent, and one user reports that the chat app now routes video requests into Claude Motion by default (musalbas, single source). On a subscription, a run that hits the usage limit pauses and resumes after the reset (Claude Code v2.1.271 or newer, interactive sessions only).

Effort levelsCopy Anchor Link

Opus 5.5 has five effort levels: low, medium, high, xhigh and max. The default is medium, and it is the right setting for most fixes. Anthropic's own guidance is to "reserve xhigh and max for work where you've measured a quality gain"; Opus 5.5 at medium matches or beats Opus 5 at high on coding evaluations.

Inside a running session, type /effort xhigh. To set it from the start:

# for one session
claude --effort xhigh

# or for every session, with an environment variable
export CLAUDE_CODE_EFFORT_LEVEL=medium

max lasts for the current session only. One director skill disagrees with Anthropic for new films and asks for xhigh or max on the first build. Our rule: try the first build of a new film at xhigh, compare it with a medium build if you can afford both, and do all later notes at medium.

Ultracode is not an effort levelCopy Anchor Link

Ultracode is a setting that makes Claude plan a workflow for every real task: a JavaScript script that runs many subagents in parallel. claude --effort ultracode turns it on and sets effort to xhigh. You can also type /effort ultracode, or put the word ultracode in one prompt to run just that task as a workflow.

On video work it has not paid off. The same 15 second ad took 50 minutes at xhigh and 113 minutes with ultracode, at about 7 times the cost (nobunosuke_hori). Reports agree that long ultracode runs cost 7 to 30 times more with no shown quality gain. Keep it for long films split into chapters. The Iterate page lists more run costs.

Install HyperFramesCopy Anchor Link

HyperFrames needs Node.js 22 or newer, FFmpeg and Chrome. The CLI can download Chrome for you.

claude plugin marketplace add heygen-com/hyperframes
claude plugin install hyperframes@hyperframes

# pick "Core Skills" when asked
npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes
# non interactive: installs the core set from the current main branch
npx hyperframes skills update
# all 21 published skills
npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes --all

npx hyperframes doctor          # Node, FFmpeg, FFprobe and Chrome must pass
npx hyperframes browser ensure  # only if Chrome is missing

The skills you get:

Claude Code loads a skill on its own when your request matches its description, or when you type its name. Personal skills live in ~/.claude/skills/, project skills in .claude/skills/, and plugin skills are named /plugin:skill.

Optional: the free HyperFrames Studio desktop app (Mac and Linux) adds an agent called Framey. You draw on a frame or leave a comment and the agent edits. Download it from hyperframes.dev/studio.

Install RemotionCopy Anchor Link

npx create-video --yes --blank my-video
cd my-video
npx remotion skills add
npm run dev        # Remotion Studio preview
# in a second terminal
cd my-video && claude

Remotion's Agent Skills page gives another route, npx skills add remotion-dev/skills. Use one route, not both. The skills include /remotion-best-practices, /remotion-create, /remotion-render, /remotion-captions, /remotion-studio and /remotion-saas.

Project structureCopy Anchor Link

A HyperFrames workflow creates this layout. You mostly edit BRIEF.md, frame.md and the files in assets/; the agent writes the rest.

my-video/
  BRIEF.md            why, for whom, confirmed answers
  STORYBOARD.md       one entry per frame: outline, built, animated
  frame.md            design spec: palette, fonts, tone (brand truth)
  index.html          root composition: id, width, height, duration
  compositions/
    frames/01-hook.html   one sub-composition per scene
  assets/             logo.svg, screenshots, fonts, bgm.mp3, clips
  hyperframes.json    project settings
  audiomap.json       beats and phrases (music-to-video only)
  storyboard.html     optional sketch sheet for review
  renders/            finished files, named by project, date and time

In Remotion, src/Root.tsx registers each composition, components live in src/, assets in public/ (loaded with staticFile()), and renders go to out/.

Preview and renderCopy Anchor Link

Always look at a preview before a full render. The HyperFrames skills say it plainly: "Never render merely because checks pass."

npx hyperframes init my-video --resolution portrait   # landscape, portrait, square, or *-4k
npx hyperframes capture https://example.com --json    # start from a live site: screens, assets, colors
npx hyperframes lint                                  # fast check while building
npx hyperframes check --snapshots                     # final gate: layout, motion, contrast
npx hyperframes snapshot --at 2.5,6,11                # stills at chosen seconds
npx hyperframes preview --background                  # Studio at http://localhost:3002
npx hyperframes render --quality draft --output review.mp4
npx hyperframes render --quality delivery --output final.mp4
npx hyperframes preview --stop

Long renders from the agentCopy Anchor Link

A long render can outlive the agent's tool timeout, which kills Chrome. The HyperFrames CLI skill runs it detached:

bash -c 'set -m; HYPERFRAMES_RENDER_DETACHED=1 npx hyperframes render --output out.mp4 < /dev/null > render.log 2>&1 &'

Read the second line of the render summary. beginframe capture is the fast path. screenshot capture with software gpu (common on Linux servers) is the slow path.

Same output on every machineCopy Anchor Link

Add --docker to a HyperFrames render to get byte identical output across machines (Docker must be installed). Use it when a teammate or a server renders the final file, so a different local setup cannot change the result.

npx hyperframes render --docker --quality delivery --output final.mp4

Hardware and render timeCopy Anchor Link

No vendor publishes a seconds per frame benchmark. These are the data points we found.

Rules of thumb from the official docs:

• 60 fps doubles the frames and the render time.
• 4K is about 4 times slower per frame with files 3 to 5 times larger, and it only sharpens text, SVG and CSS, not a 1080p video inside the frame.
• Large blur() or backdrop-filter layers, many shadows and oversized images are the usual slowdowns.
• Transparent WebM encodes slowly; try --vp9-cpu-used 2.
• In Remotion, WebGL, canvas, shadows, gradients and blur are GPU work and crawl on cloud machines without a GPU. Replace static ones with a pre rendered image.

Our reading: any recent laptop with 16 GB of RAM handles 1080p at 30 fps for videos under a minute. Iterate with --quality draft and snapshots, and render the full film only at the end. Use the cloud only for long, 4K or batch jobs (Output covers cloud options).

LicensesCopy Anchor Link

Prices checked on 15 Oct 2026.

Other open source tools you will see mentioned: video-use (MIT, footage editing with coding agents), fframes (MIT, a Rust renderer on the GPU), /brag (MIT, launch videos built on HyperFrames) and OpenMontage (AGPL-3.0, so read the license before you ship client work with it).

SourcesCopy Anchor Link

• Claude pricing, API pricing, Claude Motion help
• Model configuration, Workflows, Skills, Prompting Opus 5.5
• HyperFrames on GitHub, Quickstart, Rendering and output, Performance, Studio app
• Remotion with Claude Code, Remotion skills, Render CLI, Performance, License
• Render times: roo.beehiiv.com, Vercel template, mrcsvlk, mablesjoseph, iamashtonchew
• Offline setup checklist: mirze_mehdi