Faceless video

Create one finished video with a consistent visual style and narration. For an illustrated explainer use deliberate, diagram-led scenes; for a story or documentary adapt the pacing and visuals to the brief. Do not treat an explainer as a request for rapid cuts. Preserve choices and assets supplied by the user.

Choose the requested mode before generating: illustrated explainers use references/production.md; fast-cut channel motion uses references/channel-motion.md; stills and picture stories use references/picture-story.md; a sung children's music video uses references/song.md; explicitly requested talking characters use references/talking-characters.md; a requested presenter overlay uses references/presenter.md alongside the motion workflow; edits to a previously generated video use references/editing.md. A request for background music alone is not a song request. Never infer a presenter from an incidental photo.

When the brief supplies animation_mode, treat fully_animated as motion and scene_based as stills without asking again. Resolve song intent from the complete brief, including topic and script; an explicitly sung children's video uses song mode even when a voice is supplied. Preserve the production mode when continuing or editing an existing video.

Before spending credits

Resolve missing topic, approximate duration, aspect ratio, language, visual style, voice, music and subtitle choices. Never invent a preset or voice ID. Use higgsfield preset list video-explainer --json and higgsfield voices list --json for current choices, and resolve a selected preset with higgsfield preset resolve video-explainer <id> --json. Confirm photo roles before using reference images. Honor the requested duration; never silently round it up.

Find this skill's installed directory and retain its absolute path as SKILL_DIR. Keep all work in a persistent session directory, not the skill directory. Before generation verify higgsfield account status, ffmpeg, ffprobe, python3, curl, and awk, and inspect the live schemas using higgsfield model get for each planned model. Estimate generation costs with higgsfield generate cost where supported; if an estimate is unavailable, disclose that before generation. If any required stage, model, dependency, or requested feature is unavailable, explain and stop before paid work. Do not call explainer_video or video_explainer.

Read references/production.md for the generation, assembly, QC, recovery and delivery procedure. For subtitles, read references/captions.md and check its dependencies before paid generation. Read references/creative.md for style, assets, long-form planning and review, references/styles.md for style guidance, and references/prompts.md when writing the scene plan. The executable helper scripts/assemble_blocks.sh assembles ordered video/audio pairs without changing speech speed; read its usage before running it. The previous skill name is supported for existing installations.