video-to-gif

video-to-gif is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from microsoft/hve-core. It costs 16 tokens per session (2,554 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A conversion guide that turns video files into GIF animations using FFmpeg, a command-line tool for processing media, with a two-step color optimization process.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps convert MP4 and other supported video files into optimized GIFs from a shell or PowerShell command.
Why use it?
It avoids manually editing video and helps produce GIFs with better colors and smaller files than a basic one-step conversion.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex ✓ vendor

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit It helps convert MP4 and other supported video files into optimized GIFs from a shell or PowerShell command.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif
About the project

HVE Core is a collection of agents, prompts, coding instructions, and skills for building repeatable software-development workflows with GitHub Copilot. It is intended for individuals and teams that want structured AI-assisted research, planning, implementation, and review, while the catalogue entries provide many of its reusable workflow components.

microsoft/hve-core · 1,446 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add microsoft/hve-core --skill video-to-gif
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/hve-core

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for video-to-gif

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for video-to-gif

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/microsoft/hve-core/video-to-gif.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 16 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,554 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 4 findings, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Tool Misuse · line 43
    Tool calls are chained to bypass individual safety checks or escalate capabilities beyond what any single tool call would allow.
    Fix: Limit tool chaining depth and validate the output of each tool before passing it to the next. Require explicit user approval for multi-step chains.
  • medium Privilege Escalation · line 43
    Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
    Fix: Avoid sudo/root unless strictly required. Prefer least-privilege patterns. If elevation is needed, document the justification and scope.
  • medium Privilege Escalation · line 332
    Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
    Fix: Avoid sudo/root unless strictly required. Prefer least-privilege patterns. If elevation is needed, document the justification and scope.
  • medium Excessive Agency · line 168
    Skill allows unbounded resource consumption (API calls, storage, compute). Without rate limits or quotas, a compromised or misbehaving agent can cause denial-of-service or cost overruns.
    Fix: Set explicit rate limits, timeouts, and resource quotas for API calls, file operations, and compute. Implement circuit breakers for runaway loops.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00016 $0.02554
Opus 5 $0.00008 $0.01277
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00511
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00255

Measured 11d ago against content hash 5fe871c364cf, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

video-to-gif scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 3 executable files (scripts/convert.ps1, scripts/convert.sh, tests/convert.Tests.ps1), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg
.github/skills/experimental/video-to-gif/SKILL.md · 347 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 347 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Video-to-GIF Conversion Skill

This skill converts video files to optimized GIF animations using FFmpeg two-pass palette optimization.

Overview

The two-pass conversion process generates superior quality GIFs compared to single-pass approaches. Pass one analyzes the video and creates an optimized color palette. Pass two applies that palette to produce the final GIF with better color fidelity and smaller file sizes.

Response Format

After successful conversion, include a file link to the GIF in the response with the absolute file path:

/absolute/path/to/filename.gif

This allows the user to open the file and review it.

Prerequisites

FFmpeg is required and must be available in your system PATH.

macOS

brew install ffmpeg

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg

Windows

Using Chocolatey:

choco install ffmpeg

Using winget:

winget install FFmpeg.FFmpeg

Verify installation:

ffmpeg -version

Quick Start

Convert a video using default settings (10 FPS, 1280px width, sierra2_4a dithering):

scripts/convert.sh input.mp4
scripts/convert.ps1 -InputPath input.mp4

Output saves to input.gif by default.

File Search Behavior

When a filename is provided without a full path, the script searches in this order:

  1. Current working directory
  2. Workspace root (if inside a project)
  3. ~/Movies/ (macOS) or ~/Videos/ (Linux)
  4. ~/Downloads/
  5. ~/Desktop/

This allows natural commands like convert.sh demo.mov without specifying full paths.

HDR Handling

The script automatically detects HDR video content via ffprobe by checking for BT.2020 color primaries or SMPTE 2084 transfer characteristics. When HDR is detected, tonemapping is applied automatically to produce SDR-compatible GIF output with proper color preservation.

Use --tonemap to select the tonemapping algorithm:

Algorithm Characteristics
hable Filmic curve, good highlight rolloff (default)
reinhard Preserves more color saturation
mobius Similar to reinhard with better highlights
bt2390 ITU standard, more conservative

Read the full file on GitHub · 347 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 347 lines · 16 tokens per session scan B 5fe871c364cf

Subscribe to this mod's changes

video-to-gif is a skill published in the GitHub repository microsoft/hve-core (1,446 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 16 tokens to every session and 2,554 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

webgl-holographic-foil

A self-contained WebGL2 hero: thin-film interference over a crushed-foil surface whose palette shifts with the viewing angle; move the cursor to tilt the film.

nexu-io/open-design · 41 tokens

general-video

Author or edit a custom HyperFrames composition when no specialized workflow fits, or when BRIEF.md sets flow: companion. Use for longer or multi-scene pieces, brand and sizzle reels, montages, static loops, static title cards, footage remixes, and freeform builds. Use motion-graphics instead for a short unnarrated…

heygen-com/hyperframes · 92 tokens

html-ppt-hermes-cyber-terminal

OpenDesign + BYOK: choosing and wiring your own model, hands-on — cost, quality, and the routing decision. Built as a decision-grade AI literacy deck for engineers, IT, applied-AI teams.

nexu-io/open-design · 53 tokens

html-ppt-taste-brutalist

16:9 HTML deck in tactical-telemetry / CRT-terminal taste. Deactivated-CRT charcoal slides, white-phosphor monospace, hazard-red accent, scanline overlay, ASCII syntax, density over decoration. Distilled from Leonxlnx/taste-skill brutalist-skill (Tactical Telemetry mode).

nexu-io/open-design · 78 tokens

diagnostic-stem-delivery

Audio production with diagnostic analysis, timecode parsing from documents, and verified export workflow.

HKUDS/OpenSpace · 23 tokens

chengfeng-check-updates

An environment manager for a video-editing system. It checks whether its skills and runtime—the software needed to run them—are installed and compatible.

Agentchengfeng/chengfeng-videocut-skills · 120 tokens