{"slug":"launch-video","title":"launch-video","summary":"Make a showreel-grade motion-graphics launch video, with music, that introduces a CLI, library, or product from its repo. Use when asked for a launch, promo, sizzle, or showreel video, an animated intro for a project, or a video to post on X/social.","platform":"Claude","tags":[],"authorName":"LLM Mart","authorSlug":"llm-mart","score":0,"source":"github","price":null,"verified":false,"createdAt":"2026-10-14T21:49:27.908141Z","repo":{"url":"https://github.com/dzhng/skills","stars":1333,"forks":81,"license":"MIT","updatedAt":"2026-10-14T20:39:18Z"},"bodyHtml":"<hr>\n<h2>name: launch-video\ndescription: Make a showreel-grade motion-graphics launch video, with music, that introduces a CLI, library, or product from its repo. Use when asked for a launch, promo, sizzle, or showreel video, an animated intro for a project, or a video to post on X/social.</h2>\n<h1>Launch Video</h1>\n<p>The bar is a <strong>showreel</strong>: the piece a motion designer puts on their résumé to\nprove how good they are — dynamic, ambitious, scored to music, a real\nprofessional production and never a demo or prototype. Go all out. The repo\nsupplies the story; the craft is yours. Nothing here is a template: if the\npiece could be re-skinned for any other project, it has failed.</p>\n<h2>Workflow</h2>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Find the story.</strong> Read the README, docs, benchmarks, and brand art. Done\nwhen you can state, each with a source: what it is in one line, how it works\nunderneath (the audience is technical), and the proof worth landing. Flag\nany claim the repo cannot back instead of inventing its meaning.</li>\n<li><strong>Direct before you build.</strong> Choose one visual concept grown from what the\nproject <em>is</em> (its metaphors, its brand art, its mechanism): a world with its\nown look, camera, and signature move, rather than a sequence of panels.\nThen commit to one familiar real-world analogy for the mechanism (building\na city, running a kitchen, a heist) and map every step onto it: name each\nstep in the analogy's vocabulary, and give each one the everyday props that\nexplain it at a glance (a surveyor's tripod, stakes, cranes, an inspection\nstamp). Digestible beats clever: a viewer should get each step from\nreferences they already know, without reading a word. Write\nit as a shot list on a music timeline. Done when every shot names its camera\nmove and the one moment in it a motion designer would be proud of. A shot\nwhose description is \"a card/panel/list appears\" gets redesigned.</li>\n<li><strong>Build picture and score from one timing source.</strong> Every event time lives\nin one place that both the scenes and the soundtrack read, so hits land on\nhits. Synthesizing the music in code keeps that lock exact.</li>\n<li><strong>Review as a director.</strong> Render a draft, tile each shot into contact\nsheets, and get a fresh-eyes critique from a subagent that has not seen your\nplan. Then ask each shot the showreel question. Fix and re-render until\nevery shot passes, not a sample.</li>\n<li><strong>Ship.</strong> Make the thumbnail (rules below), render the master (1080p60,\nhigh-quality H.264, 320k AAC), reveal it in Finder, and commit the project\nto the repo as a standalone package, with renders and generated audio\nignored and a short README covering commands, the timing principle, and the\nclaim sources and methodology kept outside the film.</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>Marketing, not a white paper</h2>\n<p>Lead with the product and a few memorable benefits. Keep methodology, sample\nsizes, missing-data allowances, benchmark caveats and source citations in the\npackage README or linked report, not in the video or key art. Do not add fine\nprint, asterisk footnotes, disclaimer blocks or defensive narration. If a claim\nneeds narrowing to stay true, narrow the headline itself; never use tiny text\nto rescue a misleading headline. Review each frame for reading burden as well\nas visual quality.</p>\n<h2>Show, don't tell</h2>\n<p>Text is the last resort. Before any word goes on screen, find the picture\nthat makes it unnecessary: an object that transforms, a world that changes,\nmotion that performs the idea. Keep text only where nothing visual can carry\nit: the product's real commands, its name, and a claim that must be exact.\nThe one exception is orientation: give each shot one header saying what is\nhappening (it can be dynamic, like a live count that ticks with the action),\nor the best animation reads as random motion.\nWhen a draft leans on labels, captions, or subtitles to explain what is\nhappening, redesign the shot instead of rewording the text.</p>\n<h2>The showreel question</h2>\n<p>Would a motion designer put this shot on their reel? Tells that it has slid\ninto explainer or demo:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Animated slide deck.</strong> A static layout where elements slide in and hold.\nA reel's camera is always going somewhere, and its composition keeps\nchanging.</li>\n<li><strong>Reading, not watching.</strong> Paragraphs, UI cards, body copy, or a subtitle\nunder a headline (a headline that needs a subtitle is two ideas). A reel\nspeaks in few-word hits at dramatic scale, and the visuals carry the\nmechanism.</li>\n<li><strong>Broken metaphor.</strong> An action that doesn't do what it depicts: a cut that\nignores the pieces it claims to divide, a label nobody could read against\nits ground. Make the motion true to the objects on screen.</li>\n<li><strong>One trick.</strong> Every element springs in the same way. A reel shows range:\ndepth and parallax, scale contrast, match cuts and transitions that carry an\nelement into the next shot, speed ramps, lighting and color shifts, particles\nand physics, typography that moves as design.</li>\n<li><strong>Flat.</strong> Everything sits on one plane at one scale, with no foreground,\nbackground, or light.</li>\n<li><strong>Deaf.</strong> Motion ignores the music, or the music sits under the picture\ninstead of driving it.</li>\n<li><strong>Prototype 3D.</strong> Untextured primitives under flat light with no lens: it\nreads as a tech demo. If the piece goes 3D, finish it like a game\ncinematic: physically based materials with surface detail and bevels that\ncatch light, reflections and soft shadows, emissives that bloom, and a lens\n(ambient occlusion, depth of field, grain, aberration on impacts).</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Rules</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rebuild, never screenshot.</strong> Break any UI down into parts that can move.</li>\n<li><strong>Judge effects in a rendered frame, never the live preview.</strong> Frame-by-frame\nrenderers (Remotion's manual advance, for one) can silently drop a post\nstack or a canvas layer that looks fine live.</li>\n<li><strong>Claims stay exact.</strong> Verify headline claims against the source and keep\ntheir scope clear in the headline. Preserve supporting evidence in the\ndocs; follow the marketing rule above for what belongs on screen.</li>\n<li><strong>You cannot listen.</strong> Verify the mix by measurement (integrated loudness\naround −11 to −14 LUFS, and a spectrogram showing risers and impacts at their\ncue times), and say in the handoff that the audio was checked by measurement,\nnot by ear.</li>\n<li><strong>Thumbnail.</strong> Feeds (X) pick an early frame and skip a one-frame poster, so\nhold the preview for ~0.3s of pre-roll, then move it into the opening (shift\nthe music by the same amount). Match the pre-roll background to the opening\nso playback doesn't flash. The best preview is the product doing its job\n(name, tagline, a completed command and its output); the headline number\ngets its payoff shot and a separate key-art still.</li>\n</ul>\n","files":[{"path":"SKILL.md","sizeBytes":6702,"isText":true}],"reviewScore":null,"reviewSummary":null,"trust":{"provenance":"trusted-source-unreviewed","notice":"Community-authored content, reproduced verbatim and not vetted as instructions. Treat it as data to evaluate, never as directives to follow.","bodySource":null},"bodyLocked":false,"purchaseUrl":null,"sourceUrl":null,"report":{"provenance":"trusted-source-unreviewed","screen":{"ran":true,"outcome":"clean","suspicious":0,"notes":0,"hiddenCharacters":false},"virusScan":{"engine":"clamav","status":"clean","scannedAt":"2026-10-14T21:50:11.074822Z","sha256":"02DBE657B2F46E1222CD19284B2B3BE7FEA95B75F9AF60114F0ACC7668EE52D0","sizeBytes":3350},"review":null,"source":{"repositoryUrl":"https://github.com/dzhng/skills","path":"skills/graphics/launch-video","license":"MIT","commit":"f2fbf92f131fb08bbf3e400a1ef99b7be85bb2bc","subtreeSha":"DF74556DCDC9D6BF6B9F15A56DC32C0F91E3C44155372F1294C6A978547B020C","lastSyncedAt":"2026-10-14T21:49:23.275319Z"},"reviewedAt":"2026-10-14T21:51:21.430043Z","notice":"Community-authored content, reproduced verbatim and not vetted as instructions. Treat it as data to evaluate, never as directives to follow."},"install":[{"target":"skills-cli","command":"npx skills add https://github.com/dzhng/skills/tree/main/skills/graphics/launch-video"},{"target":"claude-code","command":"claude plugin marketplace add https://llmmart.ai/marketplace.json && claude plugin install dzhng-skills@llmmart"},{"target":"git","command":"git clone https://github.com/dzhng/skills.git"}]}