HyperFrames CLI
Run commands as npx hyperframes ... unless project instructions provide a wrapper. Obey the wrapper when present. The CLI requires Node.js 22 or newer and FFmpeg.
Development loop
- Scaffold:
npx hyperframes init <project>or capture a site. In non-TTY mode, pass--non-interactive --example=<name>. - Find the move: before authoring motion by hand, search for a primitive that already does it:
npx hyperframes catalog --query "reveal a headline one line at a time". Ask for the effect you want rather than the mechanism you have in mind. Install withnpx hyperframes add <name>(see/hyperframes-registry). Author by hand only once nothing fits. - Author: write the composition using
/hyperframes-core. - Get fast feedback while editing: run
npx hyperframes lintafter the first HTML pass and after structural changes. - Run the final gate: run
npx hyperframes check; it reruns lint before opening the browser. Do not prepend a redundant standalone lint invocation. Add--snapshotsfor annotated overview frames and finding crops. - Inspect sub-compositions: when
index.htmlmountsdata-composition-src, capture midpoint snapshots and inspect each mounted scene. - Open the final Studio preview: run
npx hyperframes preview, hand the timeline project URL to the user, and ask whether to revise or render. - Render only after approval: use draft quality for iteration and high quality for delivery.
- Verify the output: confirm the file exists, is non-empty, and has a plausible duration.
# Fast iteration check; repeat while authoring as needed.
npx hyperframes lint
# Required final gate; includes lint.
npx hyperframes check
npx hyperframes preview
npx hyperframes render --quality high --output out.mp4
test -s out.mp4
ffprobe -v error -show_format out.mp4
check runs lint first, then uses one browser session and one seek pass to audit runtime errors, failed requests, layout, *.motion.json assertions, and WCAG contrast. Persistent findings gate the exit code; transient entrance or exit findings are informational. Use --strict to gate warnings. validate, inspect, and layout remain aliases for compatibility but must not appear in new instructions or scripts.
Two different preview surfaces
Do not confuse these states:
| Surface | When it may open | Purpose |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Storyboard board | Before composition checks, only when storyboard: yes | Review plan cards and wireframe sketches. Open ?view=storyboard#project/<name>. |
| Final composition preview | After check passes | Review the assembled timeline before render. Open #project/<name>. |
The early board is not approval of the final video. Rendering always requires the final approval defined by hyperframes-core/references/review-loop.md.
Sub-composition smoke test
Static audits cannot catch every mount failure. When the project uses sub-compositions, capture at least one visible midpoint for each host slot:
npx hyperframes snapshot --at <t1>,<t2>,<t3>
Treat tiny unstyled content, canvas-sized icons, missing hero elements, or timeline-registration timeouts as render-blocking mount defects. See hyperframes-core/references/sub-compositions.md for the corresponding fixes.
Agent conventions
-
Search the catalog before writing motion by hand.
npx hyperframes catalog --query "<the beat, in plain language>". Search is entirely local: there is no hosted tier, no account, and the query text is never sent anywhere. By default it ranks on vocabulary shared with the item's name, title and description, which misses any phrasing that does not reuse the catalog's own wording. Add--on-deviceto rank by meaning instead (see the offline tier below). -
Read which tier answered; never infer it from results appearing. With
--jsonthe envelope carriesquery,tier(on-deviceorwords),tier_detail,dropped,unindexed,shown,totalandresults, plustop_scorewhen the answering tier produces one andwarningswhen a tier was asked for and could not run. A weak result onwordsis expected; the same result onon-deviceis a bug.top_scoreis on-device only and has no threshold behind it: the ranker returns the whole catalog in some order for every query, so read it as evidence rather than as a pass or fail. -
droppedandunindexedare opposite skews between the registry and the on-device index, and rewording the query fixes neither.droppedcounts ranked names this registry cannot install, so the strongest matches are the ones being lost.unindexedcounts registry moves the index cannot see at all, which no query can ever return. Refreshing the registry is not the answer to either: its manifest carries a 24h TTL and heals itself, while the vectors are a separately published artifact fetched into~/.hyperframes/catalog/. Re-running with--on-devicerefetches that index whenunindexedis above zero, so that is the remedy to hand the user. A pure over-coverage skew (droppedabove zero whileunindexedis zero) does not trigger the refetch; clearing~/.hyperframes/catalog/is the only way out of that one. Both counts are of names rather than of results, so either can exceedtotal. -
Offer the offline tier; never enable it silently. A one-time ~33 MB download (a quantized ONNX build of
bge-small-en-v1.5plus its tokenizer, pinned to a fixed revision) and the catalog vectors from the registry, both cached under~/.hyperframes/, neither added to the project or any package. Once cached it ranks by meaning with nothing sent. Say the size out loud and let the person decide, then pass--on-device(with-yto skip the prompt) once they agree. The interactive offer only fires on a TTY, and under--jsonnothing about it is printed at all, so in an agent run you have to raise it with the user yourself. -
Prefer
--jsonfor agent and CI calls. Server-moderender,preview, andplaydo not provide ordinary JSON output;preview --selection --jsonandpreview --context --jsonare query-mode exceptions. -
doctor --jsonalways exits zero. Gate on its payload:npx hyperframes doctor --json | jq -e '.ok' >/dev/null -
Non-TTY mode is automatic.
initrequires--examplethere; use--non-interactiveto force deterministic behavior on a TTY. -
Use one
HYPERFRAMES_RUN_IDfor all commands in the same verification loop. -
Use
--strict,--strict-all, and--strict-variableswhen the corresponding warnings, variables, or CI conditions must gate the render. -
JSON paths redact the home directory as
$HOME; do not try to reverse the redaction. -
When a hosted cloud project approaches or exceeds the 200 MB upload limit, use
cloud render --dry-run --jsonand follow the.hyperframesignoreinvestigation inreferences/cloud.md. Never ignore an asset merely because it is large. -
Never render merely because checks pass. Pause at the final preview and wait for approval.
Studio-directed edits
When the user refers to “this element” or the current selection, query Studio instead of guessing:
npx hyperframes preview --context --json --context-fields selection
Use selection.target.hfId when available, otherwise its selector and source file. If the result reports no-selection, ask the user to click the element and rerun. Request only the context slices you need; use --context-detail full only for computed styles or editable text metadata. Full behavior and failure codes live in references/preview-render.md.
Render choices
| Need | Command |
| ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Fast local iteration | npx hyperframes render --quality draft |
| Final local delivery | npx hyperframes render --quality high --output out.mp4 |
| Reproducible container render | npx hyperframes render --docker --strict --output out.mp4 |
| Local variable-driven batch render | npx hyperframes render --batch rows.json --output "renders/{name}.mp4" |
| HeyGen-hosted zero-infrastructure render | npx hyperframes cloud render |
| Self-managed distributed AWS render | npx hyperframes lambda render <project> --width 1920 --height 1080 --wait |
| Self-managed distributed GCP render | npx hyperframes cloudrun render <project> --width 1920 --height 1080 --wait |
Skill attribution is automatic — the examples above need no --skill. A project scaffolded by a workflow (hyperframes init --skill=<workflow>) records its owning skill in hyperframes.json, and every later render inherits it on anonymous telemetry: re-renders, npm run render, and --batch alike. Pass --skill=<slug> explicitly only to stamp a project that was not created through a workflow (its first render then persists it).
Use cloud rendering when the user wants hosted rendering without local Chrome, FFmpeg, or AWS. Use Lambda only when AWS ownership is a requirement. Use Cloud Run only when GCP ownership is a requirement. Read the matching reference before running any cloud path.
After verifying a successful render, send one feedback report unless telemetry is disabled or the user opted out:
npx hyperframes feedback --rating <0-10> --comment "<specific result or friction>"
Keep clean-run feedback concise. For any bug or friction, capture a reproduction packet before submitting; do not send only a symptom summary. Include the rerunnable command (relative to the project directory — feedback is submitted to a public channel, so do not paste absolute paths, home-directory prefixes, or user/machine identifiers), expected versus actual behavior, exact error (also strip absolute paths from stack traces — keep basename + line, drop the leading directory), whether output completed/fell back/failed, workaround, and repro-project status. For a rating ≤ 7 that describes a visual defect (black frame, flicker, corrupt output, wrong frame, blank output, other visual anomaly), also include a COMPOSITION_STRUCTURE: block — a privacy-preserving structural anatomy (element census + attribute presence + timeline shape) so maintainers can pattern-match against known bug families without the composition ZIP. Agents auto-fill this via the composition-census helper; the human user does not fill it by hand. If the issue did not reproduce again, say so and still include the last failing command and logs. Use --file-issue only with consent: it publishes a minimal reproduction to a public URL. The required packet format and privacy warning live in references/preview-render.md.
Read the matching reference before running a command
The following references and owning skills are mandatory command contracts, not optional background reading. Before running a command in the table, read its matching row.
| Need | Reference |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| init, capture, skills | references/init-and-scaffold.md |
| lint, check, motion sidecars, snapshot | references/lint-validate-inspect.md |
| compare, grade-compare, variable-driven render --batch | references/compare-and-batch.md |
| beats for an existing project's Studio beat grid | references/beats.md |
| preview, play, render, publish, Studio context, feedback | references/preview-render.md |
| doctor, browser management | references/doctor-browser.md |
| auth, HeyGen-hosted cloud rendering, and template variables | references/cloud.md |
| AWS Lambda deployment and rendering | references/lambda.md |
| Google Cloud Run deployment and rendering | references/cloudrun.md |
| info, upgrade, compositions, docs, benchmark, telemetry, media preprocessing | references/upgrade-info-misc.md |
For composition variables, also read /hyperframes-core → references/variables-and-media.md. For hyperframes add and hyperframes catalog, use /hyperframes-registry. Before hyperframes present, read /slideshow; before hyperframes keyframes, read /hyperframes-keyframes. For TTS, transcription, captions, or background removal choices, use /media-use.
The specialized commands are deliberately documented by their owning workflows:
npx hyperframes present <project-dir> --port 3004 --no-open
npx hyperframes beats <project-dir> --json
npx hyperframes keyframes <project-dir> --json
present serves a navigable deck with presenter and audience synchronization. beats is the standalone Studio beat-grid utility defined in references/beats.md. keyframes surfaces seek-safe animation and motion-path diagnostics.