Helios Skills Collection

This catalog contains agent skills for Helios, a browser-native video engine for programmatic animation and rendering. It lives in skills/ of the Helios repository.

Installation

This is a collection of skills. To use them, install individual skills by their path:

# Make a video (the entry skill, also shipped in the Helios agent plugin)
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/plugins/helios/skills/make-video

# Getting started
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/getting-started

# Core skills
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/core
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/renderer
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/player
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/studio

# Workflows
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/workflows/create-composition
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/workflows/render-video
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/workflows/visualize-data
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/workflows/archive-broll

# Design / motion
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/design/animated-video-philosophy
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/design/cinematic-product-promo-plan
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/design/motion-styles

# Guided video creation
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/guided/motion-design-rules
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/guided/brand-video
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/guided/cartoon-short
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/guided/music-video
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/guided/video-recipes

# Framework examples
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/react
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/vue
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/svelte

# Animation libraries
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/gsap
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/framer-motion
npx skills add BintzGavin/helios/skills/examples/threejs

Available Skills

Make a Video

• plugins/helios/skills/make-video - The entry point, kept with the Helios agent plugin in plugins/helios/ (one level up from this catalog). One HTML page with window.renderAt(t), rendered to MP4 with npx @helios-project/cli render, checked with stills and contact sheets, with a soundtrack. Start here when asked for a video drawn with code.

Getting Started

• skills/getting-started - Installation and quick start guide. Covers package installation, requirements (Node.js, FFmpeg), basic setup, and initial composition structure. Use when setting up a new Helios project.

Core Package Skills

• skills/core - Core API for Helios video engine. Covers Helios class instantiation, signals, animation helpers, and DOM synchronization.
• skills/renderer - Server-side rendering of Helios compositions to video files.
• skills/player - Embeddable video player with composition playback and controls.
• skills/studio - Visual editor for Helios compositions.

Workflow Skills

• skills/workflows/create-composition - Workflow for creating a new Helios composition.
• skills/workflows/render-video - Workflow for rendering compositions to video.
• skills/workflows/visualize-data - Workflow for data visualization animations.
• skills/workflows/archive-broll - Find, preview, cut and credit public-domain and Creative Commons B-roll from the Internet Archive.

Design Skills

• skills/design/animated-video-philosophy - Working philosophy for animated video: story-first motion, pacing, shots, timing, composition, medium-specific grammar, technical commitments, and anti-patterns. Use when directing or critiquing motion and programmatic video.
• skills/design/cinematic-product-promo-plan - Template plan for a ~45s feeling-first cinematic product promo: brief through ship, hero-element journey, look/motion/audio, deliverables matrix, accessibility. Adapt to any product category.
• skills/design/motion-styles - Opt-in library of established visual styles, each a style card with colour rules, motion grammar and a checkable signature list, plus a tested renderAt(t) demo. Load only when the user names a specific style or asks for style options; otherwise design an original look.

Guided Video Creation Skills

• skills/guided/motion-design-rules - Motion design framework that holds in any style: anti-slideshow architecture, depth, one easing personality, choreography, transitions, timing to sound, and scripted checks. Style cards override it. Referenced by all guided video skills.
• skills/guided/brand-video - Promo, explainer, product demo, testimonial, launch and vertical social videos in one guided pipeline. Locks the format, randomizes the staging and designs an original look from a seed so videos don't repeat; known styles only on request. Optional beat-synced music and Internet Archive B-roll.
• skills/guided/cartoon-short - Hand-drawn cartoon short: a character rig you design, acted emotion changes, boiling ink-and-paint linework, storyboarding by reads. Includes a tested starter page.
• skills/guided/music-video - Lyric and karaoke music video: word timings by forced alignment, treatment and section storyboard, a timeline derived from lyrics and beats, karaoke recipes. Includes a tested karaoke page.
• skills/guided/video-recipes - Opt-in genre recipes with tested demos (scale dive, process explainer, era timeline, mechanism/proof, kinetic type, UI morph loop, pixel sprite), plus the video brief template and a gotcha list. Load only when the request is one of these genres.

Framework Integration Skills

• skills/examples/react - React integration patterns
• skills/examples/vue - Vue integration patterns
• skills/examples/svelte - Svelte integration patterns
• skills/examples/solid - Solid.js integration patterns
• skills/examples/vanilla - Vanilla JavaScript patterns

Animation Library Skills

• skills/examples/gsap - GSAP animation integration
• skills/examples/framer-motion - Framer Motion integration
• skills/examples/lottie - Lottie animation playback
• skills/examples/threejs - Three.js 3D scenes
• skills/examples/pixi - PixiJS 2D graphics
• skills/examples/p5 - p5.js creative coding

Data Visualization Skills

• skills/examples/d3 - D3.js visualizations
• skills/examples/chartjs - Chart.js animated charts

Rendering Technique Skills

• skills/examples/canvas - Canvas 2D rendering
• skills/examples/signals - Reactive signals patterns
• skills/examples/tailwind - Tailwind CSS styling
• skills/examples/podcast-visualizer - Audio visualization

When to Use

Use these skills when:

• Creating programmatic video compositions
• Working with browser-native animations (CSS, WAAPI)
• Building video rendering pipelines
• Integrating Helios with React, Vue, Svelte, or other frameworks
• Using animation libraries like GSAP, Framer Motion, or Three.js
• Creating data visualizations as video
• Setting up Helios development workflows
• Applying a consistent philosophy to motion, pacing, and visual storytelling in video
• Planning or producing feeling-first cinematic product promos (see design/cinematic-product-promo-plan)

Repository

View all skills at https://github.com/BintzGavin/helios/tree/main/skills and the plugin at https://github.com/BintzGavin/helios/tree/main/plugins/helios