Remotion is a framework that makes videos out of code. Instead of dragging clips on a timeline, your video is a small project of files, and rendering turns it into an MP4. Claude Code already writes code, so it can build the whole thing from a plain-English brief while a live preview updates as it works.
The reason this matters is not the setup, it is what happens afterwards. A finished video in a normal editor is a locked file. A finished video here is a project you can change with a sentence, hand a spreadsheet to, or re-run next week with new numbers and the same look.
node -v and seeing a version number come back.These are terminal commands, not prompts. Pick the one line that matches your machine, paste it, and press enter.
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash. Native installs update themselves in the background, so you stay current without thinking about it.irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex. Git for Windows is recommended alongside it so Claude Code can use a Bash shell.brew install --cask claude-code on macOS, or winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode on Windows. Neither of these auto-updates, so run the upgrade command occasionally.claude in your terminal and follow the sign-in prompt. Full instructions and troubleshooting live in the Claude Code quickstart.Run these four lines in your terminal, in the folder where you keep projects. This is the official path from Remotion's installation docs, and it takes a couple of minutes.
npx create-video@latest --yes --blank my-video creates a blank project with Tailwind and the Remotion agent skills wired in. Swap my-video for whatever you want the folder called.cd my-video.npm i. This is the slow one, and it only happens once per project.npx remotion skills add installs Remotion's official skill pack so Claude actually knows the framework instead of guessing at it. You can also install them globally with npx -y skills@latest add remotion-dev/skills -g -y so every future project gets them./remotion-create, /remotion-markup, /remotion-studio, /remotion-render and /remotion-captions.npm run dev runs the project locally.npm run remotion launches Remotion Studio, which is the preview with a timeline, a props editor and a render button. Keep it open on a second screen or beside your terminal so you watch changes land as Claude works.claude from inside my-video so it can see the files it is about to write.npx remotion render renders your composition to a file. If you do not name a composition it will ask you to pick one, and if you do not give an output path it writes into the out folder. H.264 is the default codec, which is the one you want for social (render command reference).Build me a [length in seconds] vertical 1080x1920 video in this Remotion project. Use the Remotion skills you have installed and follow the framework's own best practices rather than improvising your own animation approach.
Here is the script, one line per on-screen beat, and I want each line to appear as its own moment rather than all at once: [paste your script, one line per beat]. Time it so the words are readable at normal reading speed, hold each beat long enough to actually finish reading it, and never leave the frame empty between beats.
Brand rules, apply these everywhere and do not introduce any other colours or fonts: my accent colour is [hex], my background is [hex], my heading font is [font] and my body font is [font]. My logo is at [path to the file you dropped into the public folder] and it should appear [where and when you want it]. Keep the motion calm and confident, no bouncing, no spinning, no more than two animation styles in the whole video, and use the same easing throughout so it feels like one piece.
Build it as a proper composition with the text content pulled out into props at the top of the file, so I can change the words later without touching the animation code. When you are done, tell me the exact composition ID and the command to render it, and list anything you had to guess at so I can correct it before we go further.This is the actual unlock. Because the video is a project rather than a locked file, changes are conversation, and they take seconds rather than a re-export.
I have watched it in the Studio and I want these specific changes. Make only these changes and leave everything else exactly as it is, including timing on the beats I have not mentioned: [list your changes plainly, one per line, for example "the second line stays on screen too briefly, give it another 20 frames", "the accent colour should be warmer, closer to this hex", "swap the logo for the new file in the public folder", "cut the intro so it starts on the first line of the script"].
Do not redesign anything I have not asked about, do not tidy up the code in a way that changes the look, and do not shorten or reword my script text unless I asked you to. If one of my changes breaks the total duration or pushes a beat past the end of the composition, adjust the composition length rather than silently trimming a beat, and tell me what you did.
After the changes, tell me in one line what is different, and confirm whether the Studio preview reloaded or whether I need to restart it.One template, one dataset, and Remotion loops over the rows and renders one video per row. That is a genuinely different capability from any timeline editor, and it is what makes this worth learning if you run ads, sell a product with many variants, or send personalised video.
Turn this composition into a parameterised template and set it up for a dataset render, following Remotion's documented approach for rendering many videos from one template.
The data lives in [path to your CSV or JSON file] and each row has these fields: [list your column names and what each one means, for example headline, subhead, price, product image URL, and a filename to use for the output]. Every one of those fields should be a prop on the composition with a sensible default, so the template still previews correctly in the Studio when no data is passed in.
Handle the messy reality of real data rather than assuming it is clean: text that is longer than my example should shrink or wrap rather than overflowing the frame, a missing image should fall back to a plain background instead of breaking the render, and any row with an empty required field should be skipped with a warning rather than rendering a broken video.
Then write me a script that loops over every row and renders one video per row into an output folder, named using the filename field. Run it on the first three rows only so I can check them before I commit to the whole set, and tell me roughly how long the full run will take.Remotion handles audio properly: you drop files into the project's public folder and reference them, then Claude can time them to the frame, layer music under a voiceover, and fade either one. That is real sound design in the editing sense, and it is worth asking for.
What it does not do is invent the audio. Claude is not generating an original track or a sound effect out of nothing here, so you supply the music and the voiceover, from your own library or a royalty-free source, and check the licence covers how you plan to use it. Full component reference: Remotion audio docs.
Claude Code is the other cost, on your normal Anthropic plan. Rendering itself happens on your own machine, so there is no per-video fee for a solo creator: a two-minute render costs you two minutes of laptop fan noise and nothing else.
The clean way to think about it: this is your graphics department, not your editor. It builds the animated intro, the stat card, the kinetic quote, the product promo, the outro, the fifty ad variants. Your talking-head footage still gets cut by you, because choosing the good take is taste, and taste is the part worth keeping.
Start smaller than you want to. Build one fifteen-second animated chart so you feel the prompt-to-preview loop, then build one reusable template you can re-run monthly, then graduate to the dataset render. People who start with "make my whole channel intro package" tend to stop after one frustrating evening. People who start with one chart tend to still be using it a month later.