Studio

vclaw studio is the human-friendly planning front door for VideoClaw.

It does not replace the low-level CLI. It builds a production plan from a goal, then shows the exact commands and artifacts that will be used.

Start With A Dry Run

vclaw studio --dry-run --goal create-video --project demo --intent "Create a 30 second product ad"

The Phase 1 Studio command is plan-only. It does not call providers, run FFmpeg, or spend credits.

Goals

🎬create-video

Original video from a brief.

create-video

📋copy-reference

Adapt a reference video or ad.

copy-reference

🎤presenter-video

Bunty, Nex, Davendra, or generic presenter episode.

presenter-video

🎵music-video

Multi-shot cinematic or music video planning.

music-video

🧑‍🎤character-video

Identity-locked character ad or episode (locked Go Bananas / Flow character).

character-video

📣ugc-campaign

Belief-driven UGC campaign.

ugc-campaign

🏷️brand-campaign

Brand DNA from a website URL, seed the brief, plan an on-brand campaign.

brand-campaign

📂existing-project

Continue a project and get next actions.

existing-project

🔁review-regenerate

Review, reroll, or approve scenes.

review-regenerate

🚀publish-deliver

Build and publish a portal.

publish-deliver

The ten studio goals (each has a short alias, e.g. presenter for presenter-video).

brand-campaign (aliases: brand, website) takes the site URL via --input; its plan chains brand-extract → brief --from-brand-dna → storyboard → readiness.

Examples

vclaw studio --dry-run --goal presenter-video --project demo --input deck.pdf --client "Acme"
vclaw studio --dry-run --goal music-video --project dhuaan --duration 60
vclaw studio --dry-run --goal existing-project --project demo
vclaw studio --dry-run --goal publish-deliver --project demo --client "Acme"
vclaw studio --dry-run --goal brand-campaign --project demo --input https://acme.com

Use --write-session to persist the planned handoff under the project:

vclaw studio --dry-run --goal presenter-video --project demo --input deck.pdf --write-session

This writes projects/<slug>/artifacts/studio-session.json.

Execution (--execute)

By default Studio is plan-only — it prints the commands but runs nothing. Add --execute to run the emitted plan step-by-step. Studio does not re-implement any orchestration; it shells out to the same vclaw video … commands the plan already lists, so the plan stays the source of truth.

vclaw studio --execute --goal existing-project --project demo

Three modes (you choose at run time)

Command	What runs	Credits
--execute	Dry. Free steps + spend steps with --dry-run. Pauses at the real director storyboard gate (surfaced as a blocked step).	none
--execute --confirm-spend	Real render, human-gated. Promotes the dry spend steps to real (strips --dry-run). The render still needs the storyboard approved out-of-band — the runner does not auto-approve.	spends on approval
--execute --confirm-spend --auto-approve-storyboard	Unattended render. Also sets VIDEOCLAW_APPROVE_STORYBOARD, so a single command runs the whole pipeline through the real render with no human checkpoint.	spends unattended

Credit-safety guarantees:

• The default --execute is provably dry — a spend subcommand (execute/produce/seedance-register-assets/batch-submit/publish-preview/publish-portal-index) lacking --dry-run is refused (blocked-spend), and the dry steps keep --dry-run.
• Real spend requires the explicit --confirm-spend; unattended real spend requires both --confirm-spend and --auto-approve-storyboard (never accidental).
• Without --auto-approve-storyboard the runner strips VIDEOCLAW_APPROVE_STORYBOARD from the child env, so the director gate keeps blocking a real render.
• Fails fast — a blocked or failed step stops the run with no partial spend.
• --from-step <id> resumes after you have approved the storyboard out-of-band.

The result is reported under an execution block in the JSON output: the mode (dry / confirm-spend / auto-render), per-step status (ran / blocked-spend / blocked / failed / skipped-before-resume), the stopReason, a hint (in dry mode) on how to render for real, and any surfaced storyboard markdownPath.

Agent Contract

When stdout is piped, Studio outputs JSON. Progress and warnings stay out of stdout. The plan-only default performs no provider work; --execute runs only dry-run/free steps and pauses at approval/spend points (see above).