session-story

Session story

The agent reads its own history with its user, finds their routine, and turns one typical session into a 40 to 70 s film, in the order it happened:

• Story: the user's verbatim words arriving as objects, and the agent's own replies going back. The window and the wall clock follow the session's real time.
• Room: decorated from what the agent knows about its user.
• Score: composed by the agent against the film's own timeline.

Write story.json and the engine does the choreography. Nothing on screen is invented: every line is a quote, and the user approves every line before a frame is rendered.

When to use / when not

• Use when a user asks their agent for a film of their work together, and the agent has real history with that user: local transcripts, or messages the user pastes in.
• Do not use for someone else's history, a team's shared logs, marketing with made-up quotes, or anything the user won't review. With no history at all, ask the user for a session's messages. Never invent quotes.

Requirements and side effects (complete list)

• Tools: Node 22+, Python 3.9+ (standard library only), ffmpeg on PATH, and the HyperFrames CLI pinned to npx --yes [email protected] (downloaded from the npm registry on first use).
• Setup (once, manually): sh scripts/setup.sh runs npm ci from the committed lockfile: p5 2.3.3 (LGPL-2.1), p5.brush 2.2.3 (MIT), @fontsource/permanent-marker 5.3.0 (Apache-2.0). Read-only downloads from npm.
• Score renderer: on macOS, swift (Xcode Command Line Tools) plays the score through Apple's built-in General MIDI bank. Elsewhere, fluidsynth with a General MIDI soundfont you set as SOUNDFONT. Neither downloads anything.
• Reads (local only, after the user says yes): the agent's own transcripts, ~/.claude/projects/<project>/*.jsonl (Claude Code) and ~/.codex/sessions (Codex), for the current project unless the user allows --all-projects. Also the agent's memory and instruction files for the room. Nothing is uploaded.
• Writes: session-story-candidates.json (harvest) and everything inside the project folder you create. Both hold the user's words: never commit or share them.
• Network at build time: none. Pass --describe false to every snapshot, as shown below: with GEMINI_API_KEY set, snapshot otherwise sends frames (the user's words) to Gemini. Render locally: the page paints with WebGL.
• No credentials, no paid calls.

Workflow

1. Setup: sh scripts/setup.sh (once).
2. Ask first. Tell the user you'll read your local history with them to find the session, and wait for a yes.
3. Harvest: python3 scripts/harvest.py --project <their project folder> --out <scratch>/candidates.json prints the routine and lists sessions, most typical first. --session <id> (with the same --project) prints one in order, with local times and your replies. Per references/sources.md.
4. Scaffold: node scripts/new-project.mjs <dir>. Everything you write from here lives in <dir>.
5. Story: take a typical session and write <dir>/story.json beat by beat, in the order it happened, with each beat's real time, per references/story.md. The user's lines are verbatim spans; your replies are your own words from that session. Set screen to what their work looks like, and pick the ending their sessions have. node scripts/schedule.mjs <dir> checks it: run it after every edit.
6. Room: fill the slots from what you know about the user, per references/room.md. Draw a custom prop in <dir>/scenes/props-custom.js when the library has nothing true to them. If you are not Claude, draw yourself: references/cast.md.
7. Privacy gate: show the user one table of every on-screen line (hook, nameplate, each quote, each reply, each prop and why), each with its source. Take their edits, get an explicit yes, then set "approved": true. Until then every frame carries a DRAFT stamp.
8. Design pass: run the snapshot command schedule.mjs prints. Look at every frame: quotes legible, props where they belong, nothing covering a message. Show the user the contact sheet.
9. Score: write <dir>/score/score.py with your own theme, key and palette, per references/score.md. Then sh <dir>/score/build.sh. It fails on dead air.
10. Render: from <dir>: npx --yes [email protected] check, then npx --yes [email protected] render --fps 24 --crf 12 -o renders/session-story.mp4.
11. Check the render: its length must match schedule.mjs. Pull a frame at each key moment (ffmpeg -ss <t> -i renders/session-story.mp4 -frames:v 1 renders/check-<t>.png) and look at them. Then hand it to the user to watch with sound.

The example (node scripts/new-project.mjs <dir> --example, then schedule.mjs <dir> --example) is the reference film: a real session between Claude and the skill's author, who makes videos. It shows the format, not the shape of your film. schedule.mjs refuses it without --example, so it can't stand in for your user's story.

Verify success

• schedule.mjs exits 0 and prints no warnings. hyperframes check passes. p5.brush logs WebGL uniform warnings, which are harmless.
• The design-pass frames show every quote legible, and match the beat table.
• score/build.sh ends with ok: no dead air, and the score's length matches the film's.
• The render is the length schedule.mjs printed, has an audio track, and its frames at the key moments match the design pass.
• Failure path to test: a story that opens on a reply, or has a quote over the limit, makes schedule.mjs exit 1 and name the beat.

What the engine owns

The motion is physical and already tuned: glide paths, the fold, the throw, the swing, the bonk and the wingbeats. Change the story, the room, the cast and the score. Leave the choreography in scenes/director.js and scenes/compile.js alone unless you are fixing a bug. The motion rules are in references/motion.md.