# Case study: an AI agent studio that writes, renders and schedules short-form video

**Role:** sole builder, personal venture · **Context:** faceless short-form channels (food history and daily AI news) on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook · **Period:** Aug 2026 – Present · **Status:** in production since Oct 2026

## The problem

A short educational video needs research, a script, a voice, music, images, motion, captions, an edit, a loudness check and an upload to each platform. A small studio does this with a writer, an editor, a motion designer and a social media manager. I wanted to find out how much of that chain AI agents could run end to end, at a quality bar I would accept, while I only made the creative calls.

## The agent setup

### Three agents, three jobs

- **Director (Claude Opus 5.5).** Owns the series bible, script, look, shot list, visual review and final edit. It writes each step as a numbered runbook.
- **Executor (Codex, gpt-6.1-sol).** Runs the runbooks: image generation, render jobs, audio mix and quality checks. It stops at the first mismatch and reports, not guesses.
- **Operator (Codex, gpt-6-luna with computer use).** Drives the browser to upload, schedule and set thumbnails on each platform, then records what the platform confirmed.

### One manifest per episode

Each episode is one manifest file. A new series needs only a new series bible and new manifests; the pipeline does not change.

### The pipeline

| Stage | Tools |
|---|---|
| Facts and script | Director agent; an independent agent fact-checks before anything is published |
| Voice, music, sound effects | ElevenLabs (eleven_v4 voice, a new instrumental track per episode) |
| Stills | Codex image generation, in a real phone-photo look |
| Motion | Higgsfield (Kling 3.0) clips only where motion adds value; depth maps and headless Blender 5 for 2.5D camera moves |
| Edit and captions | Remotion 4 design system, word-timed captions |
| Mix, master, quality check | ffmpeg; loudness, true peak, duplicate-music and layout checks |
| Publish | Browser agent schedules each platform from one post queue with file checksums |

Renders run on a separate Windows GPU machine, so the laptop stays free.

## Results

- **28 finished episodes in about two weeks** (Oct 12–25, 2026), each one passing an automated 12- to 13-point quality check before scheduling.
- **53 uploads scheduled** on YouTube and Instagram from one queue, with TikTok and Facebook cuts from the same masters.
- **Paid video kept small:** a 5-second Kling clip costs 8.75 credits, so the pipeline uses stills and 2.5D motion by default and a paid clip only where it earns its place.
- **A second series in days:** a daily AI-news format (three Shorts a day with an AI avatar host and an on-screen "AI host" label) reused the same voice, render and upload stages with a new Remotion template.

## Lessons learned

- **Make the brand visible on a phone, not on a monitor.** The first logo was 5.8% of the frame width and disappeared on a phone. It became a sticker at 12–14% of the width, placed clear of the Reels and TikTok buttons.
- **Check the music, not only the voice.** Early beds sat 15 dB under the voice and one track was reused. Each episode now gets its own track, a checksum blocks repeats, and the bed sits about 10 LU under the voice.
- **Render one at a time when disk is the limit.** Three masters rendered at once filled the render disk, and two failed. The render chain now starts a job only when at least 15 GB is free.
- **Browser agents need short, unambiguous paths.** The upload dialog joined a new path to the last one, so one episode's file went up under another episode's name. Files now go into short, single-purpose folders and every upload is checked against its checksum.
- **One blocking review is enough for video.** Several review rounds slowed delivery without better results. Each episode now gets one blocking check plus the automated quality gate.
- **Generated faces are the weak point.** All five clips for one trailer were rejected because the video model redrew the faces. Clips are now used for food, objects and places, not for characters' faces.

## What I bring to your team

I can design and run a multi-agent media pipeline end to end: script, voice, image, video, edit, quality checks and publishing, with the agents' roles, checks and costs set out in writing. The same pattern (director, executor, operator, one manifest, one quality gate) carries over to marketing content, product videos and documentation.