Your coding agent is a full video studio now, for $0

# The Free Video Studio Setup

OpenMontage is a free open-source repo (AGPL) that turns your coding agent (Claude Code,
Cursor, Copilot, Windsurf, or Codex) into a video studio: you describe a video in plain
English, and the agent researches it, writes and narrates the script, finds footage, edits
it on a timeline, and renders a finished file. No paid API key required to get a real,
motion-footage video out of it, not just an animated slideshow.

The repo (github.com/calesthio/OpenMontage) sits at 59,936 stars and 7,570 forks as of this
writing, with 12 real production pipelines and 157 skill files teaching the agent how to run
each one. It's built around a simple idea: instead of you clicking through editing software,
your coding agent reads a pipeline manifest, follows a stage-by-stage skill file, calls the
tools, and checks its own work before it shows you anything.

The video walks through five moves, and each one maps to a real piece of the repo:

- Voice. Piper TTS narrates your script completely offline. No key, no per-word charge,
no network call.
- Footage. The documentary-montage pipeline pulls real motion clips from Archive.org,
NASA, and Wikimedia Commons: open archives, not stills.
- Picker. The repo builds a CLIP-searchable corpus of that footage and ranks clips
against each shot in the plan, so the edit pulls what actually fits the moment rather than
whatever loaded first.
- Timeline. Remotion and FFmpeg cut the ranked clips into an actual edit and render it,
local and free.
- Reviewer. Before you see a frame, the pipeline runs its own self-review: ffprobe
validation, frame sampling, audio-level analysis, and a subtitle check. A broken render
gets flagged, not shown to you as finished.

You need Python 3.10+, FFmpeg, and Node.js 18+ already on your machine, plus a coding
assistant. If you're reading this on a video from a coding-agent channel, you likely
already have one.

git clone https://github.com/calesthio/OpenMontage.git
cd OpenMontage
make setup

No make? The README gives a direct fallback for macOS/Linux:

python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate && python -m pip install -r requirements.txt && cd remotion-composer && npm install && cd .. && python -m pip install piper-tts && cp .env.example .env

Open the folder in your coding agent afterward and tell it what you want. The repo ships
dedicated instruction files for each major assistant, so there's no separate config step to
find the free path. Just ask for a documentary montage and say "use real footage only."

The showcase clips on the repo's own README (a Pixar-style short, a sci-fi trailer) used
paid motion-generation providers (Kling, Veo) and cost real money: around $1.33 to $4 per
short, depending on length and provider. Those are genuinely good results, and they are not
the $0 route.

The documentary-montage path is the $0 one: Piper for narration, the open archives for
footage, Remotion and FFmpeg to cut and render. Three things have to already be on your
machine for any of this to run: Python 3.10+, FFmpeg, and Node.js 18+. A fourth, the coding
agent itself, runs on its own separate subscription or token cost that this repo doesn't
touch, and neither does this kit.

Comment STUDIO on the video for the setup kit, or grab it straight from the button above.
The kit covers the exact install commands, a starter prompt for the free documentary path
in the README's own phrasing, the full free-vs-paid provider table with real numbers, and
the honest limits, including the license and a copycat-installer warning, since forks using
the same name have shown up before.

github.com/calesthio/OpenMontage