ascii-video

ascii-video is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from NousResearch/hermes-agent. It costs 17 tokens per session (3,511 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A production workflow that converts video, audio, images, or generated content into colored ASCII-art video, GIFs, or image sequences. ASCII art represents pictures with characters such as letters and symbols.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for video-to-ASCII conversions, audio-reactive visualizers, text overlays, terminal animations, and other character-based videos.
Why use it?
It provides a structured way to create animated terminal-style visuals instead of producing only static text art.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit Use it for video-to-ASCII conversions, audio-reactive visualizers, text overlays, terminal animations, and other character-based videos.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video
About the project

Hermes Agent is an AI assistant that learns from its use by creating and improving skills, retaining knowledge, searching past conversations, and adapting to its users. It is for people who want to run an agent through a terminal or messaging platforms while connecting it to different AI models and scheduled tasks.

NousResearch/hermes-agent · 244,603 stars · on GitHub · hermes-agent.nousresearch.com

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 NousResearch/hermes-agent --skill ascii-video
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/NousResearch/hermes-agent

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 ascii-video

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video/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 ascii-video

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nousresearch/hermes-agent/ascii-video.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 17 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,511 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 27 Apr 2026
  • Snyk pass 27 Apr 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
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 $0.00017 $0.03511
Opus 5 $0.00009 $0.01755
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00702
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00351

Measured 9d ago against content hash 3bd3f39985a5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ascii-video scanned grade A 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 9d ago.

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.

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

Never `stderr=subprocess.PIPE` with long-running ffmpeg — buffer fills at 64KB and deadlocks. Redirect to file. See `references/troubleshooting.md`.
Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/creative/ascii-video/SKILL.md · 249 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 249 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ASCII Video Production Pipeline

When to use

Use when users request: ASCII video, text art video, terminal-style video, character art animation, retro text visualization, audio visualizer in ASCII, converting video to ASCII art, matrix-style effects, or any animated ASCII output.

What's inside

Production pipeline for ASCII art video — any format. Converts video/audio/images/generative input into colored ASCII character video output (MP4, GIF, image sequence). Covers: video-to-ASCII conversion, audio-reactive music visualizers, generative ASCII art animations, hybrid video+audio reactive, text/lyrics overlays, real-time terminal rendering.

Creative Standard

This is visual art. ASCII characters are the medium; cinema is the standard.

Before writing a single line of code, articulate the creative concept. What is the mood? What visual story does this tell? What makes THIS project different from every other ASCII video? The user's prompt is a starting point — interpret it with creative ambition, not literal transcription.

First-render excellence is non-negotiable. The output must be visually striking without requiring revision rounds. If something looks generic, flat, or like "AI-generated ASCII art," it is wrong — rethink the creative concept before shipping.

Go beyond the reference vocabulary. The effect catalogs, shader presets, and palette libraries in the references are a starting vocabulary. For every project, combine, modify, and invent new patterns. The catalog is a palette of paints — you write the painting.

Be proactively creative. Extend the skill's vocabulary when the project calls for it. If the references don't have what the vision demands, build it. Include at least one visual moment the user didn't ask for but will appreciate — a transition, an effect, a color choice that elevates the whole piece.

Cohesive aesthetic over technical correctness. All scenes in a video must feel connected by a unifying visual language — shared color temperature, related character palettes, consistent motion vocabulary. A technically correct video where every scene uses a random different effect is an aesthetic failure.

Read the full file on GitHub · 249 lines

Files

What ships with it

9 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. 9d ago First seen · 249 lines · 17 tokens per session scan A 3bd3f39985a5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ascii-video is a skill published in the GitHub repository NousResearch/hermes-agent (244,603 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 17 tokens to every session and 3,511 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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