Caption styles: 17 looks, built the way the pros set subtitles

Seventeen caption looks with presets you can apply as numbers, not adjectives. Pick how the words are chunked first (a phrase, a group of words or one word at a time), then the look. Every look ships with a plain version that is accessible, since styled word-tracking captions trade some comprehension for attention.

Gates

• Word timings first. Build from word-level timestamps (WhisperX, ElevenLabs Scribe, a forced aligner on the script). Never estimate word times from text length.
• Chunking before look. Phrase captions by default; one word at a time only for hooks, punchlines and clips of 20 s or less.
• Readable on a phone. Keep text inside the 9:16 safe box and at 4.5:1 contrast against what sits behind it; the shared file has the numbers.
• Accessible deliverable. Offer a plain phrase SRT/VTT next to the styled render.
• Free fonts only. Every font in the presets is OFL or Apache. Swap in the person's brand font only if they have a license for video.
• Seek-safe. Every value is a function of timeline time; randomness is seeded by frame. No Date.now(), requestAnimationFrame or unseeded Math.random().
• No credits here. These templates render locally for free. Generated footage, voice or music is the varg-ai skill: call estimate_cost and wait for the person's approval before any generation.

Pick a template

17 templates, 52 presets. Each reference file has the same sections: how the pros do it (every rule cited), presets, timing and numbers, how to build it, mistakes that look amateur, sources. Each JSON file holds the same presets as machine-readable values.

Read references/_shared-caption-craft.md first: it holds the numbers every template here shares.