OpenMontage
Turning a coding agent into a video production pipeline — research, script, assets, edit, render — from one sentence.
Most AI video tools generate a clip. Making an actual video is a pipeline: research the topic, write a script, plan scenes, gather footage, cut it, add narration and captions, render. OpenMontage hands that pipeline to a coding agent — which turns out to be a reasonable thing to do, because a pipeline of scripted steps with checkpoints is exactly what agents are good at.
You describe the video; the agent runs research → proposal → script → scene plan → assets → edit → compose, stopping for your approval at each creative checkpoint.
Setup
git clone https://github.com/calesthio/OpenMontage.git
cd OpenMontage
make setup
Requirements: Python 3.10+, Node.js 18+, FFmpeg, and a coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor,
Copilot, Windsurf, or Codex). make install-gpu adds local video models — WAN, Hunyuan,
CogVideo — if you have the card for it.
Make something
From your agent, in the OpenMontage directory:
> Make a 60-second animated explainer about how neural networks learn
> Cut a two-minute documentary montage on the Apollo programme from archive footage
Renders land in projects/<project-name>/renders/final.mp4.
It really does run free
The default path needs no API keys at all:
| Stage | Free tool |
|---|---|
| Narration | Piper TTS, running locally |
| Footage | Archive.org, NASA, Wikimedia Commons |
| Composition | Remotion (React) or HyperFrames (HTML/GSAP) |
| Assembly and captions | FFmpeg, with word-level timing |
Paid APIs are opt-in and unlock generated video, generated imagery, and better voices; the project puts a full production at roughly $1–5 and ships budget controls to stop a run before it surprises you.
Twelve-plus pipelines are included — animated explainer, documentary montage, cinematic trailer, talking head, avatar spokesperson, screen demo, podcast repurposing, localisation and dub, character animation.
Where it fits
For a changelog video, a demo clip, or a launch explainer, this is the difference between “we’ll do it next quarter” and an afternoon. For anything where the craft is the point, it gets you a draft to edit, not a finished film.
Two things to check first
- The licence is AGPLv3, not MIT like the rest of this page. Fine for videos you make and publish; if you’re thinking of building a product around it, read the terms — the copyleft reaches network-delivered services.
- Archive footage has its own licences. Public-domain sources are the safe default, but “free to download” and “free to use in a monetised video” are different questions. Check per clip before publishing commercially.
Next
The composition layer on its own, as a file you can review → HyperFrames
Last updated 23 Aug 2026, 00:00 UTC.