director: An Agent Skill for Producing Complete Videos from Idea to Editable Footage

What director is and the problem it addresses

Producing a video typically involves at least five separate stages: developing the concept, writing a script or narrative, planning visuals and shot sequences, generating or capturing media, and assembling the footage. Most AI tools handle one or two of these stages in isolation. A user who wants to make an animated explainer video might get script assistance from one tool, image descriptions from another, and video generation from a third, with no shared context between them.

director is designed to keep all of those stages inside a single agent session. The README describes it as a skill for directing and producing complete video footage, starting from a one-sentence topic, a personal story, or a finished script. The agent helps clarify the content, write the narration or shooting breakdown, define visual direction, plan characters and voice, design shots, and then generate editable video clips.

The primary audience is creators who want to work alongside an agent to complete a full video rather than to get isolated text output. The skill emphasises that this is not a tool for generating a single shot or a block of copy.

Three production modes and when to use each

The README defines three modes, each with its own content structure, visual approach, and production workflow:

Animated Explainer (动画解说) converts abstract concepts, ideas, and historical events into concrete scenes with character actions and visual metaphors. The README says it suits content that explains mechanisms, theories, and knowledge topics.

Storytime Animation (故事动画) is for first-person narrative content. The README describes a format where the narrator can face the audience to tell the story directly, or step inside the events as they are re-enacted, switching between the two naturally. The README notes it is appropriate for personal experiences, stories about people around you, and first-person works that are explicitly marked as adapted or fictional.

Cinematic Drama (剧情影像) is for scripted narrative content that already has a defined world, characters, and story. The mode establishes continuous characters, settings, and voices so that performance, dialogue, action, and camera work can drive the story across multiple clips. The README describes it as suitable for AI films, AI comic dramas, short dramas, and short films.

The choice between modes affects everything downstream: the type of visual direction, how characters are described, how shots are designed, and how the voice is handled.

Installing director and calling it from an agent

Installation means making the repository's contents available in the directory that the agent can read as skills. The README gives two paths.

The first is to clone or copy the repository into the agent's skills directory. The README does not specify a universal path for this directory because it varies by agent runtime.

The second path is for Codex specifically. The README says you can tell Codex directly:

> Install the `director` skill from `https://github.com/s1dashu/director`.

Once installed, Codex users invoke the skill explicitly with:

$director

For other agents, the README says to use whatever skill invocation method that runtime supports. There is no universal CLI invocation or npm package; director is a skill directory, not a standalone executable. The repository contains directories for agents/, modes/, references/, tools/, and voices/, which together make up the structured prompt files and configuration that the skill delivers to the agent.

Media generation: LibTV CLI and 即梦 CLI

director does not generate video itself. It coordinates the agent's planning and scripting work, then relies on external tools for the actual media output. The README describes two supported tools:

LibTV CLI is referenced at tools/libtv-cli.md within the repository. The README describes it as the primary tool for media generation.

即梦 CLI is referenced at tools/jimeng-cli.md. The README presents it as an alternative. 即梦 (JiMeng) is a video generation service. The CLI integration means the agent can call it directly from the production workflow.

Neither tool is bundled in the director repository. Their documentation is provided as reference files, but installation, authentication, and API access are handled separately. This is the principal dependency that a new user needs to sort out before the skill becomes functional. The README provides example starting prompts in Chinese that invoke the skill but assumes the underlying tools are already configured.

Character and voice design across modes

The README addresses character and voice management in section form. Characters who need to appear consistently across multiple shots can be established before production begins. For Cinematic Drama, the README recommends establishing unified references for key scenes, costumes, props, and speaking characters so that separate clips maintain continuity.

Voice handling differs by mode. The references/reference-asset-library.md file in the repository documents built-in voice options. Alternatively, a user can define a custom voice starting from the first clip. Storytime Animation supports a fixed narrator voice across the entire piece. Cinematic Drama supports separate voice designs for different characters.

The voices/ directory in the repository holds whatever voice reference materials director uses for its built-in options. The README does not describe the format of those files, so users who want to understand the built-in choices would need to inspect that directory after cloning the repository.

Limitations and what the README does not document

The README is written entirely in Chinese. For non-Chinese-speaking users, translation tools are necessary to follow the setup instructions and starting prompts. The README provides example invocation prompts in Chinese, which means the examples as written require translation before use in an English-language agent session.

director is a skill file, not a self-contained application. It has no tests, no CI workflow, and no GitHub releases. The README describes no error handling behaviour. There is no documentation of what happens when LibTV CLI or 即梦 CLI fails, hits a quota, or returns an unusable result. This is a meaningful gap because video generation services frequently have rate limits, content moderation filters, and inconsistent output quality.

The visual style section of the README is hidden. The README includes a comment indicating that a section describing supported visual styles was removed temporarily while style previews were being adjusted. This means the style documentation is incomplete, and users who want to specify visual styles for their videos will need to describe them in natural language rather than selecting from a documented list.

A real alternative for structured AI video production workflows is Runway, which provides a browser-based interface with its own agent-like workflow for combining generated clips. The difference is that director works inside a coding assistant session and coordinates structured planning steps before generation, while Runway is a standalone product with its own interface. director is not a drop-in replacement for Runway because it depends entirely on the coding agent's environment.

Editorial conclusion

director fits creators who want an AI agent to handle the full video production pipeline, not just script assistance or a single shot. It requires a compatible agent (Codex is the only one named in the README) and either LibTV CLI or the 即梦 CLI for media generation, both of which are external dependencies the repository does not bundle. The three modes cover explainer content, personal storytelling, and drama, but the README does not document what happens when the agent encounters generation failures or quota limits in those external tools. The last push to the repository was on 2026-08-10, and the repository has no GitHub releases. The MIT licence covers the repository's original content.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: MIT
3. README
4. s1dashu/director on GitHub