aidemo — your coding agent makes the demo video

aidemo.top · watch a real 51s output ▶ · authoring guide · render in CI

Tell your coding agent "record a 45s demo of the checkout flow" — get back a polished MP4 with voiceover, synced captions, and auto-zoom. Any MCP-capable agent (Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI) writes one storyboard.json; the headless engine drives a real Chrome, records a deterministic replay, voices it, captions it, and trims the dead time. Because the replay is deterministic, the demo re-renders itself in CI when the product changes — no re-recording, no API key, about $0 a render. An open-source (MIT) alternative to Screen Studio, Clueso, or Demosmith for when you'd rather your coding agent make the demo.

Install: Claude Code /plugin marketplace add tandryukha/aidemo · CI uses: tandryukha/aidemo@stable · CLI npx -y @tandryukha/aidemo · Homebrew brew install tandryukha/aidemo/aidemo
Published on the GitHub Marketplace, npm, a Homebrew tap, and the MCP Registry.

_{Real output — a ~51 s self-narrated tour of Wikipedia (portal search → Ada Lovelace → focus-zoom → click through to the Analytical Engine → glide scroll), authored by Claude from one storyboard.json and recorded as a deterministic replay. The preview GIF is silent; watch the full version with narration ▶.}

Three ways to use it

1. From your coding agent — the fastest path. In Claude Code: /plugin marketplace add tandryukha/aidemo then /plugin install record-demo@aidemo (bundles the skill and the MCP server). In Codex / Gemini / any MCP agent: npx -y github:tandryukha/aidemo#stable repo-init. Then just say "record a 45s demo of <flow>" and the agent authors + renders it.
2. Locally, free & offline — AIDEMO_TTS_PROVIDER=local aidemo render <dir> --headless. An in-process voice model + script-timed captions mean no API key, ~$0, fully offline. See docs/LOCAL_MODELS.md.
3. In CI, self-maintaining — drop uses: tandryukha/aidemo@stable into a workflow. When the product changes, it replays the committed storyboard and commits fresh media — no key, no LLM tokens, ~$0 on free runner minutes. See docs/CI.md.

Free & open source. MIT-licensed. Runs on GitHub's free Actions tier, or fully local at $0 with the in-process voice — no API key, no cloud upload, no telemetry. Works against localhost and auth-walled apps (your own Chrome).

From one sentence to a narrated MP4

You type a sentence, the agent writes an artifact you can read and edit, the engine records and cuts it:

1 · What you type — one line to any MCP-capable agent (Claude Code here):

claude "record a 45s demo touring Wikipedia: search for Ada Lovelace,
open the Analytical Engine, then glide down the article"

2 · What the agent authors — a plain, editable storyboard.json (excerpt: narration + a fixed browser action-spec, side by side — no generated code):

{
  "title": "A quick tour of Wikipedia",
  "zoom": {},                                  // Screen-Studio-style auto-zoom
  "scenes": [
    { "id": "search",
      "narration": "Start at the Wikipedia portal and search for Ada Lovelace.",
      "actions": [
        { "op": "goto", "url": "https://www.wikipedia.org/" },
        { "op": "type", "target": { "selector": "#searchInput" }, "text": "Ada Lovelace" },
        { "op": "click", "target": { "selector": "button[type=submit]" } } ] },
    { "id": "engine",
      "narration": "Her notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine hold the first computer program.",
      "actions": [
        { "op": "focus", "target": { "selector": "#firstHeading" } },
        { "op": "click", "target": { "selector": "a[href*='Analytical_Engine']" } },
        { "op": "scrollBy", "dy": 900, "easing": "glide" } ] }
  ]
}

3 · How it's recorded + cut — aidemo render drives a real Chrome (smooth animated cursor, human-cadence typing, auto-zoom), then trims the dead time and syncs to the narration:

storyboard.json
   → voice     OpenAI / ElevenLabs / local TTS → audio/narration.mp3 + voice.json
   → record    drives Chrome, animated cursor  → recordings/raw.{webm,mp4} + timeline.json
   → captions  Whisper word timestamps         → generated/captions.{srt,vtt,cues.json}
   → compose   trim idle · sync · auto-zoom · cards · caption · mux → output/final-demo.mp4

4 · What you get — output/final-demo.mp4, plus a README-ready GIF (aidemo gif) and named stills (aidemo stills) from the same take. UI changed? Re-run against the same storyboard — no re-recording by hand.

The design goal: demos that look human-made and snappy, not like an AI clicking around and waiting between screenshots — by separating authoring (slow, one-time — figure out the flow) from recording (a fast deterministic replay with a smooth animated cursor).

What teams render with it

• GitHub README demos — aidemo gif demos/onboarding, drop the autoplaying GIF into the readme (the GIFs on this page are exactly that).
• Landing-page hero videos — the muted-autoplay MP4 on aidemo.top is a rendered demo, poster frame and all.
• Release / what-shipped demos — narrate the new feature, then gh release upload v1.4.0 demos/whats-new/output/final-demo.mp4.
• Customer & prospect demos — personalized flows against your real app: localhost, auth walls, your own logged-in Chrome; nothing leaves the machine.

Render in CI (self-maintaining demos)

Commit a storyboard and the aidemo GitHub Action keeps its demo media in sync — a fresh narrated, captioned MP4 (and GIF) on every relevant change. Deterministic replay + a local voice mean no API key, no LLM tokens, about $0 (just free runner minutes). It's the loop a screen recorder can't run: your demo maintains itself.

# .github/workflows/demo.yml
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- run: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y ffmpeg   # ubuntu ships Chrome, not ffmpeg
- uses: tandryukha/aidemo@stable
  with:
    demos: demos/*
    tts: local        # in-process voice → no keys, no tokens
    gif: "true"

Full recipe, templates (auto-commit / PR-comment / cron-refresh), and the always-fresh-embeds trick: docs/CI.md, docs/EMBEDS.md, docs/recipes/.

Quick start (self-contained smoke test)

A bundled fixture store (search → results → cart → checkout) that renders a finished demo with zero external dependencies:

npm install                                # Node 20+, system Chrome, ffmpeg on PATH
node examples/local-demo/serve.mjs         # terminal 1: fixture on :8787
node bin/aidemo.mjs render examples/local-demo --headless   # terminal 2
open examples/local-demo/output/final-demo.mp4   # xdg-open on Linux, start on Windows

Voice/captions need OPENAI_API_KEY in .env — or AIDEMO_TTS_PROVIDER=local (no key, offline), or OPENAI_BASE_URL at a local server. See docs/LOCAL_MODELS.md. No Playwright browser download is needed — the engine uses your system Chrome (channel: "chrome").

_{The bundled fixture rendered end-to-end — narrated, captioned, auto-trimmed. Silent preview; full version ▶.}

CLI

Each step is independently runnable and re-runnable — regenerate voice without re-recording, recompose without re-transcribing, etc.