visual-style

Art direction

A video looks made by hand when its colours, type and motion were chosen for it, and generic when they were left at a default. This skill holds the choice: a style is a palette by role and a text entrance per role, which a builder takes instead of colours of its own.

The styles

scripts/style.py holds them; run it with no arguments for each one's tokens. To the user they are "styles", never tokens.

Style	Feel	Suits
studio-dark	premium, cinematic: deep plum, warm off-white words, coral payoff	a launch, a dark UI, creative tools
paper-ink	calm, editorial: warm paper, near-black ink, a red pencil mark	how-tos for beginners, writing and planning apps
pop-block	loud, social: flat sunflower, black words, hot pink	Reels and TikTok for a young audience
keynote	clean product: light grey stage, one electric blue	a feature explainer, a B2B tool
sticky-note	friendly how-to: notepad yellow, an orange marker, typed titles	tips, "save this for later" shorts
terminal	technical: green-tinted black, mint text, typed lines	developer tools, AI chats
bloom	warm, creative: berry stage, blush words, peach payoff	photo, video and design apps
native	creator-made, not an ad: minimal chrome around the recording	content that should not read as an ad

Roles: canvas is the frame behind everything, surface the cards, bubbles and rims, ink every word (it reads on both), accent the payoff and the call to action, and entrance the text entrance for titles, lines and the call to action.

Choosing one

1. Recommend from the material, never by habit: the recording's own brightness and colours, the product's category, the destination and the audience. Say the reason in one line: "a bright UI and beginners: paper-ink keeps it friendly and lets the app's colours lead".
2. Show three that differ, on the user's own recording, before anything is rendered: the same hook frame and one step frame built in each, sampled on a contact sheet (free). Never ask for a style by its name alone.
3. A brand (colours the recording shows, or the user gives) goes onto the chosen style's roles: python3 scripts/style.py <style> brand.json. The style keeps its bones; the brand gives its colours. A brand colour that would make the words unreadable is refused with the role it breaks: keep that role from the style.
4. Pass the style's id, and the brand when there is one, in the builder's spec as style and brand. The builder resolves them; never copy colours into the spec by hand.

Defaults that look machine-made

Check a build against this list before the user sees it. Each hit is fixed, or kept with a one-line reason ("the app itself is navy, so the canvas follows it"):

• the same dark navy or black stage whatever the subject;
• every text entering the same way;
• everything centred, with nothing breaking the grid;
• a push-in as the only move;
• pure #000000 or #ffffff as the canvas or the words;
• purple-to-blue gradients, gradient text, and full-frame gradients on a dark canvas (they band when the video is compressed);
• a hook that opens on a login screen or an empty app instead of the result;
• a hook that is a product or a posed character with a slogan over it: the retention-hooks skill's ad tells;
• a logo sting, a greeting or a title card before the first real frame, or a lower third in it;
• the same layout or the same move on two beats in a row;
• glow halos around words or panels, and emoji standing in for icons;
• a centred headline over a gradient as the hero, with nothing of the product in it;
• "amazing", "seamless", "powerful" on screen where the result should do the talking, and "Introducing…", "check this out" or "like and subscribe" anywhere.

Checking a build

python3 scripts/adherence.py <file> with { scene, style, brand? } prints { ok, findings }:

• off_palette: a layer draws a colour the style does not have, including colour keyframe values. Rebuild with the style; never patch one layer's colour.
• one_entrance: every text enters the same way. Use the style's entrances.
• linear_move: a position or scale that moves on a linear curve. Every move eases; the house curve is screen-recording-zoom's.
• overshoot: a bounce on a panel, a position or an opacity. A bounce belongs only to a payoff pop, the scale of a word or a shape.

Motion checks include masks in mask.clip or legacy mask.layer, with clip taking precedence. A mask's fill and a scrim's black are not drawn colours, so they never count.