Recursive maths animator (Manim + voiceover + verification)

This skill ships helper code under references/ (palette, optional Gemini TTS adapter, manim_versioning.ManimProject) and utilities under scripts/. Agents should point users at those paths when generating projects.

Operating principles (do these every time)

1. Design theme first — Before writing Manim code, ask the user for mood, light/dark, palette (hex or brand refs), typography, motion feel, and any brand assets. Record answers in DESIGN_THEME.md (created by ManimProject.init()). If the user defers, propose a default theme and get explicit “OK”.
2. Pinned dependencies — Every project keeps a root requirements.txt (seeded on init() from this skill’s template). When you add imports or optional stacks (e.g. Gemini), update requirements.txt and tell the user to pip install -r requirements.txt. For reproducible CI, suggest pip freeze > requirements.lock.txt after upgrades.
3. Assets live in assets/ — Put images, SVGs, and custom fonts under assets/images, assets/svgs, assets/fonts. Keep scenes/ for Python only so diffs stay readable.
4. GIF before final MP4 — For stakeholder approval, produce a low-quality GIF (fast, easy to share in chat). Use ManimProject.render_approval_gif("scene_1") or render(..., output_format="gif", export_approval_copy=True). After sign-off, render output_format="movie" (default) at the target quality.
5. Verify with vision, then iterate — After each substantive render, run the verification loop below: slice frames, review with the host model’s vision, write VERIFICATION_FEEDBACK.md, fix Manim code, re-render. Prefer MP4 for final verification passes; GIF is acceptable for quick layout checks.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• manim — pip install manim (versions pinned in project requirements.txt)
• manim-voiceover with a TTS backend — e.g. pip install "manim-voiceover[gtts]" (uses network for gTTS unless you switch engine)
• ffmpeg and ffprobe — with libx264 and libass if you burn subtitles (see scripts/run_pipeline.py); ffprobe is required for extract_verification_frames.py
• git — for ManimProject versioning commands