ascii-video

ascii-video is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from S3YED/appie-kit. It costs 118 tokens per session (3,043 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of ascii-video, MIT.

A production workflow for turning videos, audio, images, or generated material into coloured ASCII-art videos. It can output MP4 files, GIFs, or image sequences.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps create video-to-ASCII conversions, music visualisers that react to audio, animated ASCII art, combined video-and-audio effects, and text or lyric videos.
Why use it?
It removes the need to build the conversion and animation process from scratch when creating moving pictures from text characters.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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

Good fit It helps create video-to-ASCII conversions, music visualisers that react to audio, animated ASCII art, combined video-and-audio effects, and text or lyric videos.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video
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 S3YED/appie-kit --skill ascii-video
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/S3YED/appie-kit

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/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/s3yed/appie-kit/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/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/s3yed/appie-kit/ascii-video.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 118 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,043 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.
Origin 89% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00118 $0.03043
Opus 5 $0.00059 $0.01522
Sonnet 5 $0.00024 $0.00609
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00304

Measured 8d ago against content hash 06391b33d48a, 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 8d 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

This is a copy

89% identical to ascii-video — 45 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/content/ascii-video/SKILL.md · 206 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 206 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ASCII Video Production Pipeline

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.

Dense, layered, considered. Every frame should reward viewing. Never flat black backgrounds. Always multi-grid composition. Always per-scene variation. Always intentional color.

Modes

Mode Input Output Reference
Video-to-ASCII Video file ASCII recreation of source footage references/inputs.md § Video Sampling
Audio-reactive Audio file Generative visuals driven by audio features references/inputs.md § Audio Analysis
Generative None (or seed params) Procedural ASCII animation references/effects.md
Hybrid Video + audio ASCII video with audio-reactive overlays Both input refs
Lyrics/text Audio + text/SRT Timed text with visual effects references/inputs.md § Text/Lyrics
TTS narration Text quotes + TTS API Narrated testimonial/quote video with typed text references/inputs.md § TTS Integration

Read the full file on GitHub · 206 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. 8d ago First seen · 206 lines · 118 tokens per session scan A 06391b33d48a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ascii-video is a skill published in the GitHub repository S3YED/appie-kit (9 stars, last pushed 16d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 118 tokens to every session and 3,043 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (runs shell commands). It is 89% identical to ascii-video, differing in 45 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

browser-edge-cases

SOP for debugging browser automation failures on complex websites. Use when browser tools fail on specific sites like LinkedIn, Twitter/X, SPAs, or sites with Shadow DOM.

aden-hive/hive · 40 tokens

aws-patterns

Lambda best practices, S3 event patterns, SQS/SNS fanout, and DynamoDB access patterns for serverless AWS architectures.

vibeeval/vibecosystem · 31 tokens

review

Review the changes since a fixed point (commit, branch, tag, or merge-base) along two axes — Standards (does the code follow this repo's documented coding standards?) and Spec (does the code match what the originating issue/PRD asked for?). Runs both reviews in parallel sub-agents and reports them side by side. Use…

stevesolun/ctx · 95 tokens

agents-md-protocol

Create or review an AGENTS.md file so coding agents get stable repo-local instructions: environment setup, testing, style, security boundaries, PR policy, and handoff rules. Use when a repo lacks durable agent guidance or when a custom harness needs a predictable context file.

stevesolun/ctx · 59 tokens

investment-memo-generator

Investment memo creation combining financial analysis, document generation, and structured templates. Use when creating investment memos, pitch decks, deal summaries, or investment committee materials.

travisjneuman/.claude · 37 tokens

python-memory-safe-scripts

Memory-safe Python script patterns for long-running processes under systemd MemoryMax constraints. Covers allocator purge (mimalloc/glibc malloctrim), HTTP response lifecycle, DataFrame cleanup, thread-local connection reuse, and periodic GC cadence. Battle-tested through 5 OOM optimization cycles on production GPU…

terrylica/cc-skills · 197 tokens