Kanban Video Orchestrator
Plan, set up, and monitor a multi-agent video production pipeline backed by Hermes Kanban. Use when the user wants to make ANY video — narrative film, product/marketing, music video, explainer, ASCII/terminal art, abstract/generative loop, comic, 3D, real-time/installation — and the work warrants decomposition into specialized profiles (writer, designer, animator, renderer, voice, editor, etc.) coordinated through a kanban board. Performs adaptive discovery to scope the brief, designs an appropriate team for the requested style, generates the setup script that creates Hermes profiles + initial kanban task, then helps monitor execution and intervene when tasks stall or fail. Routes scenes to whichever Hermes rendering / audio / design skill fits each beat (ascii-video, manim-video, p5js, comfyui, touchdesigner-mcp, blender-mcp, pixel-art, baoyu-comic, claude-design, excalidraw, songsee, heartmula, …) plus external APIs for TTS, image-gen, and image-to-video as needed.
Skill metadata
| Source | Optional — install with hermes skills install official/creative/kanban-video-orchestrator |
| Path | optional-skills/creative/kanban-video-orchestrator |
| Version | 1.0.0 |
| Author | ['SHL0MS', 'alt-glitch'] |
| License | MIT |
| Platforms | linux, macos, windows |
| Tags | video, kanban, multi-agent, orchestration, production-pipeline |
| Related skills | kanban-orchestrator, kanban-worker, ascii-video, manim-video, p5js, comfyui, touchdesigner-mcp, blender-mcp, pixel-art, ascii-art, songwriting-and-ai-music, heartmula, songsee, spotify, youtube-content, claude-design, excalidraw, architecture-diagram, concept-diagrams, baoyu-comic, baoyu-infographic, humanizer, gif-search, meme-generation |
Reference: full SKILL.md
The following is the complete skill definition that Hermes loads when this skill is triggered. This is what the agent sees as instructions when the skill is active.
Kanban Video Orchestrator
Wrap any video request — from a 15-second product teaser to a 5-minute narrative short to a music video to an ASCII loop — in a Hermes Kanban pipeline that decomposes the work to specialized agent profiles.
This skill does not render anything itself. It is a meta-pipeline that:
- Scopes the request through targeted discovery
- Designs an appropriate team (which roles, which tools per role) based on the style
- Generates a setup script that creates Hermes profiles, project workspace, and the initial kanban task
- Hands off to the director profile, which decomposes via the kanban
- Monitors execution, helps intervene when tasks stall or fail
The actual rendering happens inside the kanban once it's running, via whichever
existing skills + tools fit the scenes — ascii-video, manim-video, p5js,
comfyui, touchdesigner-mcp, blender-mcp, songwriting-and-ai-music,
heartmula, external APIs, or plain Python with PIL + ffmpeg.
When NOT to use this skill
- The video is one continuous procedural project that needs no specialists. Just write the code directly.
- The user wants a quick one-shot conversion (e.g. "convert this mp4 to a GIF") — use ffmpeg directly.
- The output is a static image, GIF, or audio-only artifact — use the matching specific skill (
ascii-art,gifs,meme-generation,songwriting-and-ai-music). - The work fits a single existing skill cleanly (e.g. a pure ASCII video — just use
ascii-video).
Workflow
DISCOVER → BRIEF → TEAM DESIGN → SETUP → EXECUTE → MONITOR
Step 1 — Discover (ask the right questions)
The discovery process is adaptive: ask only what is actually needed. Always start with three questions to identify the broad shape:
- What is the video? (one-sentence brief)
- How long? (5-30s teaser / 30-90s short / 90s-3min explainer / 3-10min film / longer)
- What aspect ratio + target platform? (1:1 / 9:16 / 16:9; X, IG, YouTube, internal, etc.)
From the answer, classify the style category. The style determines which follow-up questions to ask. Do not ask all questions at once. Ask 2-4 at a time, listen, then proceed. Make reasonable assumptions whenever the user implies an answer.
For complete intake patterns and per-style question banks, see references/intake.md.
Step 2 — Brief
Once enough is known, produce a structured brief.md using the template in
assets/brief.md.tmpl. Stages:
- Concept — the one-sentence pitch + emotional north star
- Scope — duration, aspect, platform, deadline
- Style — visual references, brand constraints, tone
- Scenes — beat-by-beat breakdown (durations, content, target tool)
- Audio — narration / music / SFX / silent (per scene if needed)
- Deliverables — file format, resolution, optional alternates (vertical cut, GIF, etc.)
Show the brief to the user for confirmation before designing the team. The brief is the contract — every downstream task references it.
Step 3 — Team design
Pick role archetypes from the library that fit this video. Compose, don't clone. Most videos need 4-7 profiles. The director is always present; the rest are picked by what the brief actually requires.
For the role library and per-style team compositions, see references/role-archetypes.md.
For mapping role → which Hermes skills + toolsets it loads, see references/tool-matrix.md.
Step 4 — Setup
Generate a setup script (setup.sh) and run it. The script:
- Creates the project workspace (
~/projects/video-pipeline/<slug>/) - Copies any provided assets into
taste/,audio/,assets/ - Creates each Hermes profile via
hermes profile create --clone - Writes per-profile
SOUL.md(personality + role definition) - Configures profile YAML (toolsets, always_load skills, cwd)
- Writes
brief.md,TEAM.md, andtaste/content - Fires the initial
hermes kanban createtask assigned to the director
Use scripts/bootstrap_pipeline.py to generate setup.sh from a brief +
team-design JSON. See references/kanban-setup.md
for the setup script structure, profile config patterns, and the critical
"shared workspace" rule.
Step 5 — Execute
Run setup.sh. Then provide the user with monitoring commands:
hermes kanban watch --tenant <project-tenant> # live events
hermes kanban list --tenant <project-tenant> # board snapshot
hermes dashboard # visual board UI
The director profile takes over from here, decomposing the work and routing tasks to specialist profiles via the kanban toolset.
Step 6 — Monitor and intervene
Stay engaged — the kanban runs autonomously but a stuck task or bad output needs human (or AI) judgment.
Monitoring patterns: poll kanban list periodically, inspect any RUNNING task
that exceeds its expected duration with kanban show <id>, and check
heartbeats. When a worker's output fails review, the standard interventions are:
- Comment on the worker's task with specific feedback (
kanban_comment) - Create a re-run task with the original as parent
- Adjust the brief's scope and let the director re-decompose
For diagnostic patterns, intervention recipes, and the "task is stuck" playbook, see references/monitoring.md.
Reference: worked examples
Six concrete pipelines covering very different video styles — narrative film, product/marketing, music video, math/algorithm explainer, ASCII video, real-time installation — showing how the same workflow yields very different teams and task graphs. See references/examples.md.
Critical rules
-
Discovery before action. Never start generating a brief or team without asking at least the three baseline questions. A bad brief cascades through the entire pipeline.
-
Match the team to the video. Don't reuse the same 4-profile setup for every job. A music video that doesn't have a beat-analysis profile will misfire. A narrative film that doesn't have a writer profile will produce incoherent scenes. See
references/role-archetypes.md. -
One workspace per project. All profiles for a given video share the same
dir:workspace. Tasks pass artifacts via shared filesystem and structured handoffs. Everykanban_createcall passesworkspace_kind="dir"+workspace_path="<absolute project path>". -
Tenant every project. Use a project-specific tenant (
--tenant <project-slug>). Keeps the dashboard scoped and prevents cross-pollination with other ongoing kanbans. -
Respect existing skills. When a scene fits an existing skill, the relevant renderer should load that skill via
--skill <name>on its task oralways_loadin its profile. Do not re-derive what a skill already provides. -
The director never executes. Even with the full
kanban + terminal + filetoolset, the director'sSOUL.mdrules forbid it from executing work itself. It decomposes and routes only — every concrete task becomes ahermes kanban createcall to a specialist profile. Thekanban-orchestratorskill spells this out further. -
Don't over-decompose. A 30-second product video does NOT need 20 tasks. Aim for the smallest task graph that still parallelizes well and exposes the right human-review gates.
-
Verify API keys BEFORE firing. External APIs (TTS, image-gen, image-to-video) need keys in
~/.hermes/.envor the user's secret store. A worker that hits a missing-key error wastes a task slot. The setup script'scheck_keyhelper aborts cleanly if a required key is missing.
File map
SKILL.md ← this file (workflow + rules)
references/
intake.md ← discovery question banks per style
role-archetypes.md ← role library (writer, designer, animator, …)
tool-matrix.md ← skill + toolset mapping per role
kanban-setup.md ← setup script structure & profile config
monitoring.md ← watch + intervene patterns
examples.md ← six worked pipelines
assets/
brief.md.tmpl ← brief skeleton
setup.sh.tmpl ← setup script skeleton
soul.md.tmpl ← profile personality skeleton
scripts/
bootstrap_pipeline.py ← generate setup.sh from brief + team JSON
monitor.py ← polling + intervention helpers