Using Reelcrew

Reelcrew is a film crew for Claude Code and Codex: you say what video you need, the agent directs, and Reelcrew does the handiwork on your own computer.

Getting started

Install Reelcrew. On a Mac or Linux, in Terminal: curl -fsSL https://reelcrew.io/install.sh | sh. Linux: Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, 24.04 and Debian 12, 13 (a desktop, a server or WSL2, as a user or root); Fedora, RHEL, Rocky and Alma 8 and 9 and Amazon Linux 2023 work once you run the dnf commands reelcrew doctor prints; Alpine and glibc older than 2.28 cannot install it. On Windows, in PowerShell: irm https://reelcrew.io/install.ps1 | iex. Or ask Claude Code or Codex to install it for you.
Answer a few setup questions. Choose a voice, an image service, music. You can skip any of them and come back to them at any time.
Restart Claude Code or Codex so it picks up the new skills.
Say what video you need. For example: “Make a video explaining why the sky is blue”. The agent picks the right skill and works all the way to the MP4 file.

Forgot a command? Type /reelcrew in Claude Code or $reelcrew in Codex, or just ask: “What videos can Reelcrew make?”, “What is my computer missing?”. The agent reads the Reelcrew guide and does it for you.

Choosing a kind of video

Each kind of video is a skill. You do not need to name the skill: describe the video and the agent chooses. The sample requests below give you the idea.

Starter, Pro plan

News photo short

A 40–55 second vertical news video in photo-bulletin style for Reels, TikTok and Shorts: press photos, a fixed headline, karaoke captions, a news-reader voice.

“Make a vertical breaking-news video about … (paste the article link)”
“Build a 45-second photo bulletin about …, watermark @mychannel”

Starter, Pro plan

Cinematic explainer short

A clip of about 30 seconds explaining a science fact, with cinematic illustrations and effects timed to each word.

“Make a 30-second clip on why you cannot fold a sheet of paper more than 7 times”
“A vertical clip on how lightning forms”

Starter, Pro plan

Motion FX kit

Motion effects for talking videos: text cards, text behind the speaker, glitch, split screen.

“Add text cards and text behind the speaker to this video (file path)”
“Make a glitch opening for the clip …”

Starter, Pro plan

Animated lesson video

Turns a lecture or a talk into a 3–4 minute hand-drawn animated video, with captions and a thumbnail.

“Turn this YouTube video into an animated lesson in English: (link)”
“Make a video on why the sky is blue, with captions”

Starter, Pro plan

Paper walkthrough video

Walks through a scientific paper (PDF, arXiv) section by section, 3–5 minutes, charts appearing with the narration.

“Make a video explaining this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762”
“Sum up this PDF in a 4-minute video”

Starter, Pro plan

Paper explainer, 3Blue1Brown style

Explains a scientific paper in the 3Blue1Brown style: black background, maths formulas, drawings that build with the narration around one backbone formula, 4–6 minutes.

“Make a 3b1b-style video on this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762”
“Explain this PDF in the Manim style”

Starter, Pro plan

Engraved plate video

A 2.5–3 minute film on philosophy, history or an idea, in an editorial engraving style: sepia engravings with camera moves, portrait cards, stamps, red underlines, karaoke captions.

“Make an engraving-style video on Plato's allegory of the cave”
“Build an engraved film on Schrödinger's cat”

Pro plan

Vox collage video

A paper-collage documentary (like Vox): halftone photos, torn paper labels, red string, stamps, from 40 seconds to a few minutes.

“Make a paper-collage video on the history of the Rosetta Stone”
“Build a Vox-style video from this article (link)”

Pro plan

Archival documentary video

An 8–10 minute documentary on history or technology: licensed photos, old newspaper pages, date cards, explanatory graphics.

“Make a documentary on how the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid”
“An 8-minute report on the history of the iPhone”

Pro plan

Property location video

A vertical property video: project photos, then a real map with the routes to schools, markets and the metro, with minutes.

“Make a location video for the apartment at … (address), with these 5 photos”
“A video of an apartment next to … metro station: how many minutes on foot”

Pro plan

Isometric factory video

A 16:9 video of about 70 seconds explaining a system or a process as an isometric drawing: a 6-station conveyor moving on the beat, a routing table, stacked results, two acts before and after. Music only by default; a voice can be added.

“Make an isometric factory video explaining an AI agent system that routes tickets”
“Build a decision-factory video for a loan approval process, before and after automation”

Pro plan

Niche explainer short

A 60–90 second vertical video explaining a topic in a niche (travel, law, trading, English, history, office tips, AI for business, personal finance, cooking…): a mascot guide, a widget of the niche (cost table, route map, price candles, legal text…), voice and captions or music only.

“Make a short explainer: what 48 hours in Paris costs”
“Make an easy video on the new … rule for online sellers”

Pro plan

Beat motion video

A motion-graphics video cut on the beat, the punchline landing on the drop, words appearing as they are spoken, karaoke captions: 10 styles (a product launch as a keynote, comic or pencil sketchbook; one concept on a diagram; an idea in morphing white dots; a science paradox; farm produce from a shop’s photos; a website launch; a product demo from a screen recording; a personal showreel from a website, music only), vertical, landscape or square.

“Make a keynote-style launch video for the new feature from this changelog”
“Make a produce video from the shop's photos and clips”
“Make a showreel of me from my website”

Pro plan

Meme loop video

A square animated meme looping for about 8 seconds: one AI background image, a stick figure with a drawn cartoon face (running, waving, sleeping), flying money, z letters, a slow push-in, a title, looping music and your watermark; no AI video generation.

“Make a stick-figure meme about the race between food delivery apps”
“Redo this meme with my own character (link)”

Pro plan

Mascot 3D video

A brand's 3D mascot, rebuilt in code from the customer's pictures or loaded from their GLB file: a character sheet to approve, a 16:9 or 9:16 promo with a voice, 3D UI cards and the logo locking on the music's drop, two mascots chatting at a sidewalk tea table, and a seamless landing-page hero loop with a sample page.

“Make a 3D mascot video for my brand from these pictures”
“Two mascots chatting over iced tea, vertical 9:16”
“A hero video with our mascot for the landing page”

Pro plan

English listening video

A 15–80 second vertical English listening video for Vietnamese learners from one short lesson: a story read line by line in English and Vietnamese with a box following each word, a passage with its vocabulary tinted and glossed, or a guess-the-word quiz (the Vietnamese meaning read, a countdown, the answer with its IPA). Free Kokoro (English) and VieNeu (Vietnamese) voices on your machine.

“Make an A2 English listening video telling a story about a day at the market, 10 lines”
“Make a guess-the-word video on kitchen words, 5 words”

Pro plan

Whiteboard drawing video

A 16:9 or 9:16 whiteboard drawing video from an SRT, a voice file or a script: each 25–35 second scene is one line drawing on paper, a hand draws it region by region in the order of the story and then colours it, with the voice, a music bed, a pencil sound and optional subtitles; you approve each step before the next.

“Make a whiteboard drawing video from this subtitle file”
“Turn this script into a vertical hand-drawn explainer”

Pro plan

Machine explainer video

Explains a technical idea with a real machine drawn in isometric (many small precise parts, four-tone shading, a card with a live readout, optional WebGL and 3D), as a narrated video (Vietnamese or English, karaoke captions, mechanical sounds, −14 LUFS) or a music-only one, 16:9 or 9:16, plus the interactive HTML page and A4 or Letter PDF sheets; searches the community gallery first and credits what it reuses.

“Explain how this works as an isometric machine, as a narrated video”
“Make an interactive machine figure for my blog post and print an A4 poster”

Pro plan

Talking-head highlight short

Cuts a long talk (podcast, livestream) into a highlight video under 5 minutes, filler words removed, a vertical frame that follows the face; also a paper-collage style (the speaker as a sticker, words popping with the speech) and faceless videos from a script.

“Cut this podcast video into a 3-minute vertical highlight”
“Make a 60-second short from the livestream (file)”
“Make a collage video of the speaker on paper from this clip”
“Make a faceless collage video from this script”

Setting up the crew

Each job uses one service. Nothing costs money unless you choose it: paid services use your own key and you pay them directly. Run reelcrew setup to be asked step by step, or ask the agent.

Voice	ElevenLabs: the most natural, paid. Gemini: paid per character. OpenRouter: one key for the voices of several makers and for images, paid per character. VieNeu (free, on your computer) speaks Vietnamese only.	elevenlabs.io · aistudio.google.com/apikey · openrouter.ai
Transcription (speech to text)	ElevenLabs: the same key as the voice, with the time of every word. Soniox: paid by the minute, also with the time of every word.	elevenlabs.io · console.soniox.com
Images	Codex: uses your ChatGPT plan through the Codex CLI, no key. Gemini: paid per image. OpenRouter: the same key as the voice, many image models, paid per image.	aistudio.google.com/apikey · openrouter.ai
Music and sound effects	ElevenLabs: made from a description, paid. Sound effects also come with a free sample library.	elevenlabs.io
Cut-outs, motion	HyperFrames: free, one download.

ElevenLabs: have an account? Get a key here. New to ElevenLabs? Sign up.

Never paste a key into the chat. Enter it in a Terminal (Mac or Linux) or PowerShell (Windows) window: reelcrew keys set elevenlabs; what you type stays hidden. Keys are stored only on your computer.

Making and changing a video

Each video lives in a project folder: script, voice, music, images and the MP4 file. To change anything, tell the agent:

“Change line 3 to …”, “line 5 mispronounces a name”, “switch to a female voice”: the agent edits the script and records just those lines again.
“Happier music”, “drop the sound effect at 12 seconds”: the agent redoes the music or the mix, without rebuilding the whole video.
“Export a lighter file to send on WhatsApp”, “louder for YouTube”, “make another thumbnail”: the agent exports again from the same project.

For a change that applies to every later video (your channel colours, your own end card), ask the agent to use reelcrew skill edit: your version is kept apart and survives Reelcrew updates.

Account and computers

Reelcrew runs on a computer signed in to an account with the Starter or Pro plan: sign in once with reelcrew login (confirm in the browser) and the plan's skills download by themselves.

Each account works on 1 computer, Mac or Windows. Each computer slot can change to another computer 3 times in 30 days. Signing in again or a new key (Rotate) on the same computer, and the Cloud Agent's machine, do not count as a change. To change computers: run reelcrew license deactivate on the old one, or free it on your account page, then sign in on the new one.

Reelcrew updates itself in the background and uses the new version from the next run. To update now: reelcrew update. A new version misbehaves: reelcrew update --rollback.

Removing Reelcrew

No sign-in is needed to remove it. Ask the agent, or run it yourself in Terminal (Mac or Linux) or PowerShell (Windows):

reelcrew self uninstall: shows what will be removed (the program, the Reelcrew skills in Claude Code and Codex, the Reelcrew Studio plugin in Claude). Add --yes to remove; add --all to delete your API keys, sign-in, library and plans too. Skills you saved yourself are kept, unless you use --all.
Restart Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex.
On an old version where that command asks you to sign in: run reelcrew update first (no sign-in needed), then remove it again.

To use it on another computer instead of removing it: first run reelcrew license deactivate to free this computer's place.

When the reelcrew command no longer runs, remove it by hand:

Mac: the program and its data	`rm -rf ~/.reelcrew`
Mac: the PATH line	`delete the line with .reelcrew/bin in ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bash_profile)`
Linux: the program and its data	`rm -rf ~/.reelcrew`
Linux: the PATH lines and links	`delete the line with .reelcrew/bin (and the # reelcrew line above it) in ~/.profile (or ~/.bash_profile), ~/.bashrc, ~/.zprofile and ~/.zshrc; delete ~/.local/bin/reelcrew and ~/.local/bin/rc when they point to ~/.reelcrew/bin/reelcrew`
Windows: the program and its data	`Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $env:USERPROFILE\.reelcrew`
Windows: PATH	`remove %USERPROFILE%\.reelcrew\bin from the user Path variable (Settings › Environment Variables)`
Reelcrew skills in Claude Code and Codex	`delete the reelcrew-* and reelcrew folders in ~/.claude/skills (Claude Code) and ~/.agents/skills (Codex)`
The Reelcrew Studio plugin	`claude plugin uninstall reelcrew@reelcrew-local, then claude plugin marketplace remove reelcrew-local`

When something goes wrong

reelcrew doctor shows ✗ on a line	That line gives the command that adds what is missing. Or run reelcrew setup to be asked step by step.
A key is refused, or there is none	Run reelcrew keys set <name> in Terminal/PowerShell and paste the key again. reelcrew keys test checks every key.
The skills do not show in Claude Code or Codex	Restart the agent (Claude Code or Codex). Still missing: run reelcrew setup, then restart it once more.
A paid skill says there is no licence	reelcrew whoami shows whether this computer is signed in to the right account; then reelcrew license sync.
The computer cannot find the reelcrew command	Open a new Terminal/PowerShell window after installing. Still not working: run the install command again.
A new version has a bug	reelcrew update --rollback goes back to the previous version at once.
An error you do not understand	Paste the whole error message to the agent: every Reelcrew error has a code and a hint for the fix.

Everyday commands

You rarely type commands: the agent runs them for you. The commands below run in Terminal (Mac or Linux) or PowerShell (Windows); rc is the short name of reelcrew.

`reelcrew setup`	Gets the computer ready: installs the skills, downloads the tools, asks you to choose voice, images, music
`reelcrew doctor`	Checks what the computer is missing
`reelcrew keys set <name>`	Enters an API key (typed hidden): elevenlabs, soniox, gemini, openrouter…
`reelcrew login`	Signs this computer in to your account; the plans you bought download by themselves
`reelcrew whoami`	Which account this computer is signed in to, with which plans
`reelcrew ls`	The skills on this computer
`reelcrew check <video>`	Checks a video before you post it: black frames, frozen frames, loudness, silences, size
`reelcrew studio claude-plugin`	Makes the Reelcrew plugin for Claude: Reelcrew Studio (watch the video, pin comments) right in Claude Desktop; prints the install command
`reelcrew update`	Updates Reelcrew and the plans; --rollback to go back
`reelcrew license deactivate`	Frees this computer's place so you can use another one
`reelcrew self uninstall`	Removes Reelcrew from the computer, no sign-in needed (shows what goes first, add --yes to remove; see Removing Reelcrew)