Under the hood
RasanAI Studio is a native Mac app. It doesn't make the film itself. It runs your own Claude Code or OpenAI Codex as the film's director, hands it a crew and an engine, and shows you the work at every step. This page follows one film through all of it, down to the files on your disk.
The big picture
Studio, the director and the engine never call each other over a network. Each one reads and writes files in your project folder. That is why you can quit the app mid-film, and why a phone pager like Squeak can answer a call the same way Studio does.
Layer 1RasanAI Studio
The window you use. Every stage is a native SwiftUI screen: no web view, no embedded console. It keeps your film library, launches the director, shows what it is doing, and turns your clicks into answers.
Layer 2The director
Your own Claude Code or OpenAI Codex, signed in to your own plan, started headless in the project folder. It reads RasanAI's SKILL.md and directs: it plans the film, briefs the crew, and stops at the calls that are yours.
Layer 3The engine
The RasanAI skill, copied inside the app with its own Node. Zero-dependency scripts that print JSON: research tools, the design desk's library, the music edit, the gates, the 3D runtime and the finish. HyperFrames renders the scenes; FFmpeg handles every sound and pixel after that.
Layer 4Your disk
One plain folder per film. The brief, the research, the three scripts, the chosen design system, the score, the scenes as HTML, every render and every decision with its reason. Nothing lives inside the app, so updates never touch your films.
A film's life
These are the same seven dots you see across Studio's toolbar. Pick one to see what is on your screen, who on the crew is working, and what is written to disk.
You type what you want, paste a product URL, or drop in clips, a logo or a track. Studio creates the film's folder straight away and saves it as a draft. No agent has started yet, so a draft costs nothing.
Your partSay what the film is about. That is the only thing RasanAI ever requires.
assets/, audio/, compositions/ and exports/.
Studio suggests a film type, a length and a shape from your sentence. You can also answer a few taste questions, pick a brand, and set the pace: Fast, Standard or Thorough. Fast is the default: about two minutes of research, one agent per scene, and one review round.
Your partAdjust anything, then press Start film.
claude --print --output-format stream-json, or codex exec --json with a workspace-write sandbox.node, npx hyperframes and ffmpeg. It may not use sudo, delete recursively, run installers, or git push.director-driver.mjs supervises the process. Pause and Resume really stop and continue it, and it stops a director that repeats the same tool call five times in a row.SKILL.md. Never start a server.
Before a single word of script, a research crew reads the product's site, help center, changelog and brand pages and collects its real screens. With your permission it also reads the product's code on your Mac. Their notes merge into one truth sheet, and every fact on screen has to trace back to it.
Your call 1 of 5Read the brief sentence and what the research found. Fix a word, or carry on.
crew.mjs plan and writes each member a brief adapted to the model that will run it.console.mjs push writes the Brief into session.json. Studio sees the file change and shows the call as a native screen.actions.jsonl. console.mjs wait picks it up and marks it in consumed.json.
Three writers each pitch one film from the truth sheet, picking from 70 narrative devices. A script editor reads them like a hostile client. Each script is a title, a logline and every timed beat: what is on screen, what is said and what we see. There is no look yet, so you judge the story as words and timing.
Your call 2 of 5Pick one, ask for three more, or tell Claude what to change.
story.mjs check scores each script against the story rubric before you see it.
There is no style menu. A design researcher studies the story's subject, then three designers each blend two to four references from a library of 108 design systems and 64 motion styles into a new system. Each is a complete DESIGN.md, drawn on your film's own first line. If you picked a brand, the first look is your brand, extended for motion.
Your call 3 of 5Pick a look, ask for new blends near one, or turn the energy up or down.
DESIGN.md, and its motion language becomes motion.md, a contract of eases, durations and holds.
A motion director scores every shot in 2D or real 3D, and every cut with exact handoff numbers on both sides. The music is edited to picture on bar lines, so it ends when the film ends. The preview puts each scene's key frame at its real duration, with the music and the voice under it.
Your call 4 of 5Play it, and click any moment to leave a note. Then the scenes are built.
music.mjs finds beats, bars, sections and a real ending using Node and FFmpeg only.comment actions pinned to a scene, a time and a point on the frame.
Before you see the film, it has to pass the gates, and critics who never saw it being made judge it fresh. Anything that fails goes back to the scene's animator, at most twice. Then the finish adds real motion blur and one grade across every scene, and the film is rendered.
Your call 5 of 5Note a moment, apply the notes, then export.
story.mjs, slop.mjs, obey.mjs, motion-gate.mjs, stage3d.mjs check and sound.mjs check.finish.mjs renders sub-frames for motion blur (up to 32 samples), then adds grain, halation, a vignette and an optional LUT.How the app and the director talk
The director's state lives in session.json. Only the engine writes it, atomically, by writing a temporary file and renaming it. Studio only reads it. Answers go the other way, as one JSON line appended to actions.jsonl under a lock file.
rejected.json with the reason, and never reaches the director."schema": 1), so other apps can answer too. That is how Squeak lets you make a call from your phone.# Studio takes actions.lock, appends, releases
{"id": "st-8f2c",
"ts": "2026-10-21T09:41:07Z",
"step": "story",
"type": "choose",
"value": "bold",
"note": "",
"source": "studio"}
# the director, blocked on the call
$ node console.mjs wait
consumed st-8f2c story · choose · bold
# → the Look desk startsThe crew, for real
The faces in Studio stand for real jobs. Behind them are 35 role briefs. Each one is a separate agent with its own instructions, the files it must produce, and a check its work must pass before the director accepts it. The crew never talks to you directly.
Your Claude Code or Codex session. Plans the crew, accepts or rejects their work, and keeps every decision with its reason.
SKILL.md · crew.mjs · console.mjs
Product, brand, screens and precedent researchers, a local code scout (with permission), and a research lead who merges their findings.
research/ · truth sheet
Three script writers in parallel, a script editor, and a treatment writer for music videos.
story/ · story.mjs check
A design researcher, three design-system designers, plus styleframe and frame designers for key frames.
design/ · DESIGN.md · design.mjs
Scores the whole film, then either one film builder or one animator per scene builds it, in 2D or real 3D.
motion/score.json · compositions/
A concept critic, a structure critic, a film critic, and frame, move and A/B jurors. "Competent but safe" counts as a fail.
the gates · critic reports
For a folder of footage. Each clip is measured and transcribed, then cut on word boundaries, with cards between clips and captions on top.
footage/ · Footage and Cut panels
The same crew on either model. crew.mjs brief rewrites each brief for the model that will run it. The role, the check and the bar stay the same. On Codex, where there is no sub-agent tool, the crew runs as parallel codex exec processes from the same prompt files, and the same checks accept their work.
The checks
Each gate is a script that reads the actual work, not the agent's description of it. A check that couldn't run is never reported as a pass.
story.mjs check rejects the default arc, and any pitch that would work for any product.
slop.mjs catches the tells in copy, look, motion, timing and sound, from "seamless" to glowing text to a whoosh on every cut.
obey.mjs opens every scene in headless Chrome and checks every GSAP tween against motion.md.
motion-gate.mjs measures the draft frame by frame: motion in at least 75% of frames, no freeze over 0.8 s, and text that fits.
stage3d.mjs check: the same pixels at the same time, and never blank. sound.mjs check: −14 LUFS, no audible loop, no dead air.
obey: violations — 2 tweens (0 exempt) in 1 file(s); 2 error(s)
[ERROR] ease-outside-set compositions/frames/01-shoebox.html
h1.headline "Tax season. Again." @0.20s 800ms ease=power4.out
ease power4.out is not one of motion.md's eases
fix: use ease: "expo.out"
[ERROR] banned:fade-up-slide compositions/frames/01-shoebox.html
h1.headline "Tax season. Again." @0.20s 800ms ease=power4.out
fix: replace with one of motion.md's entrances
# after the repair pass
obey: clean — 8 tweens (0 exempt) in 1 file(s); 0 error(s)Rendering
Every scene is an HTML composition with one paused GSAP timeline. The renderer doesn't play the page; it seeks it to each frame's exact time and takes a picture. So the same time always gives the same pixels, on every render.
data- attributes.Tally launch film/
├─ rasanai-project.json type, length, shape, status
├─ rasanai-brief.json your sentence, sources, taste
├─ DESIGN.md the chosen look
├─ assets/ audio/ managed copies of your files
├─ compositions/ the scenes, as HTML
├─ exports/ what you exported
└─ .rasanai/
├─ current → the active run
└─ run-<id>/
├─ session.json the director's state
├─ actions.jsonl your answers
├─ decisions.json every call + reason
├─ research/ story/ design/ look/
├─ motion/score.json motion.md
├─ music/ sound/ footage/
├─ animatic.json render-final.json
└─ director.log
Brands/<name>/DESIGN.md reused across filmsOn your disk
Studio's library is ~/Documents/RasanAI. Search, rename, archive and duplicate films in the app, or open the folder in Finder. Nothing is kept inside the app.
decisions.json is what the Decisions drawer (⌥⌘D) shows: the story device, the look, the motion, the transitions and the music edit. Each one names the obvious option it passed over.
The chosen system is a complete DESIGN.md: colours by role, real fonts, motion and camera. Any agent or design tool can build from it. Brands live in Brands/ and are reused across films.
The run folder holds the whole state. Quit mid-film and the director resumes from it; there is no session to lose.
The stack
Open source under MIT, in one repository. The app, the engine, the site and the release tooling all live together, and each release goes out through one script.
| Part | Technology | What it does here |
|---|---|---|
| The Mac app | ||
| Interface | Swift 6 · SwiftUI | A native screen for every step and panel, with no web view. The logic lives in StudioCore, separate from the app target. |
| Platform | macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon | Ad-hoc signed, not yet notarized by Apple, and not sandboxed, because it has to run your CLI tools. |
| Updates | Sparkle 2.10 · EdDSA | Checks a signed appcast every hour. An update is installed only if its signature verifies. |
| Feedback | Heresay | The in-app Report button for telling us what broke. |
| The director | ||
| Agent | Claude Code · OpenAI Codex | Your own install and your own plan. Studio checks it is signed in and never handles your login. |
| Supervisor | director-driver.mjs | Owns the process group: pause, resume, the loop guard, and the event log Studio reads. |
| Instructions | RasanAI skill | SKILL.md plus 35 role briefs. The same skill runs in Claude Code on its own, with a browser console instead of Studio. |
| The engine | ||
| Runtime | Node 22 (bundled) | Zero-dependency scripts that print JSON. Shipped inside the app, so you don't need Node installed. |
| Composition | HyperFrames | Turns HTML scenes into video, frame by frame, in headless Chrome. Installed on first use. |
| 2D motion | GSAP 3.14 | Every tween has an explicit ease and is checked against the film's motion contract. |
| 3D | three.js r181 · Rasan3D | A deterministic 3D runtime with a render graph, GLSL passes, DOM in 3D and keyable lens settings. |
| Sound and picture | FFmpeg · ffprobe | Music analysis and editing, footage measurement, the grade, loudness and the final encode. Installed on first use. |
| Type | Google Fonts · Fontshare | Real fonts for every design system, copied into the project. |
| The library (data, not code) | ||
| Design systems | 108 | Movements, studios, regional and period looks, and materials. The designers blend from these; you never pick from a list. |
| Motion | 64 entries · 10 personalities | Motion and camera styles, each with eases, durations, holds and banned moves. |
| Story | 70 devices | Narrative devices the writers pick from what is true about your product. |
| Sound | 64 tracks · 190 effects | A catalogue for the music edit and a sound-effect index for things you can see happen. |
What leaves your Mac
Studio has no account, no server and no open port. But making a film uses outside services, so here is where your data goes.
Your film folders, your footage, the engine and its scripts, music analysis, every gate, and the render itself.
Your director sends prompts and project context to Anthropic or OpenAI, under your own account and their terms. Check your agent's permissions before sharing private material.
Research reads public pages. Site capture, voice, music and fonts can use HyperFrames, Google Fonts or Fontshare. Updates are fetched from GitHub.
Where it stands
We would rather tell you what hasn't been proven yet than let you find out halfway through a film.
Updates, storage, the questions, playback and export have been tested locally on real Macs.
Generating a whole film through Studio with a real agent is still being validated across every film type and revision. Expect rough edges, and tell us what breaks.
You on a green screen, keyed into worlds made for each beat. These have only been checked on synthetic footage, with no full run on a real shoot yet. The clip plays whole: it isn't trimmed.
Installing the app
The beta is ad-hoc signed but not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS asks you to confirm the first time. Managed Macs may not allow it.
Release notes · SHA-256 checksum · Update feed · Source and build instructions
~/Library/Application Support/RasanAI/Tools. Node is already inside the app.Prefer the terminal?
The engine inside Studio is the RasanAI skill for Claude Code. Install it on its own and type /rasanai. Your calls then open in a Director's Console in your browser, on 127.0.0.1 with a per-session token. It needs Node 20 or newer (it fetches a private copy if you have none), the HyperFrames skills, and FFmpeg.
From inside Claude Code.
> /plugin marketplace add Sibhimanyu/rasanai> /plugin install rasanai@rasanaiFrom your terminal.
$ npx skills add Sibhimanyu/rasanai --skill rasanaiClones and links the skill.
$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sibhimanyu/rasanai/master/install.sh | bash> /rasanai make a 45s launch film for https://tally.appThe skill updates itself when it loads. MIT licensed; the bundled GSAP stays under its own Standard License.