steal

Steal

Someone's edit works and you want it on your own videos. This skill measures their edit, writes it down as a style, and proves it on one of your takes before you use it.

Output:

• video-agent/styles/<name>.md: the style, read by /short-editing <take> style <name>.
• video-agent/styles/<name>/: its stills, sound effects and stickers.
• video-agent/edits/<slug>-<name>/final.mp4: the test video.

Read references/learnings.md before you start. Each rule in it comes from a copy that got rejected.

How to run it

• Preflight: ffmpeg -version && yt-dlp --version. Missing: /studio-setup tools.
• Talk in the creator's language. Say what you do in one line before each long step.
• <name>: the creator's handle in lowercase with dashes, unless the user names the style.
• Scratch files go in video-agent/.tmp/steal-<name>/ (W below).

1. Get the reel

• A local file: use it.
• A YouTube link: yt-dlp -o "W/reel.%(ext)s" "<url>".
• Instagram or TikTok: try yt-dlp first. If it is blocked (login wall), and Treg is set up (treg balance answers), treg catalog search "download an Instagram reel video file", then treg catalog get <id> for the price, then treg call <id> --query url=<url> and download the video URL it returns. Otherwise ask the user to save the video and give you the file.
• When you can, study 2 or 3 reels of the same format. One reel can be the exception.

2. Measure

Do all three passes. A style copied from the frames alone misses half of it: the sound and the rhythm.

Faster with sub-agents. If your agent can run sub-agents (Claude Code, Codex), make the sheets and cuts.txt yourself (first block below), then hand Frames, Sound and Zooms to three sub-agents at the same time. Give each one the absolute paths, its section copied whole, and one file to write: W/notes-frames.md, W/notes-sound.md, W/notes-zooms.md, numbers and timestamps only, never playing audio aloud. Look at the sheets yourself while they work: you judge the look, they bring the numbers. Then write the style from their notes. Without sub-agents, do the passes one after the other.

Frames and cuts

ffmpeg -v error -y -i W/reel.mp4 -vf "fps=2,scale=270:480,tile=8x3:padding=4:color=black" W/sheet-%02d.jpg
ffmpeg -hide_banner -i W/reel.mp4 -vf "scdet=threshold=12" -an -f null - 2>&1 | grep -o "scd.time: [0-9.]*" | cut -d' ' -f2 > W/cuts.txt
ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of csv=p=0 W/reel.mp4

• Each sheet holds 24 tiles at 2 per second. Sheet N, tile i (from 0) shows second 12(N-1) + i/2.
• Seconds per shot = duration / (number of lines in cuts.txt + 1).

Read EVERY sheet and write down:

• Layouts: full camera, split screen (where the seam sits), flat color with text, cut-out person on a color, B-roll, screenshots.
• Captions, per layout: font feel (condensed, rounded, serif), case, weight, size, where they sit on the body, how a word appears, which word gets emphasised and how.
• Stickers and images: type, border, size, when they land (on the word that names them?), whether they stack.
• Hook (first 2 s), CTA (last 3 s), color grade (bright and flat, or contrasty and dark).

Save 6 to 10 key stills to video-agent/styles/<name>/:

ffmpeg -v error -y -ss <seconds> -i W/reel.mp4 -frames:v 1 video-agent/styles/<name>/t<seconds>.jpg

Sound

ffmpeg -v error -y -i W/reel.mp4 -lavfi "showspectrumpic=s=3000x500:legend=0:scale=log:stop=11000" W/spectrum.png

• The image is 3000 px wide, so a cut at t seconds sits at x = 3000 × t / duration. Read it next to cuts.txt.
• A bright thin vertical stroke high up = a click. Wide and low = a boom. A rising smear = a whoosh. A dark gap across the steady music band = the beat drops out.
• Zoom on one cut to see its hit: ffmpeg -v error -y -ss <cut - 1> -t 2 -i W/reel.mp4 -lavfi "showspectrumpic=s=1000x500:legend=0:scale=log:stop=11000" W/cut-<n>.png.
• Beat: count the regular low strokes over 10 s on the spectrogram (or tap along while it plays): strokes per 10 s × 6 = BPM.

Music level under the voice (optional, needs ELEVENLABS_API_KEY in video-agent/.env, uses a few credits, say so first):

set -a; . video-agent/.env; set +a
ffmpeg -v error -y -i W/reel.mp4 -vn -ac 1 -ar 44100 W/full.wav
curl -s -X POST https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/audio-isolation -H "xi-api-key: $ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" -F audio=@W/full.wav -o W/voice.mp3
ffmpeg -v error -y -i W/voice.mp3 -ac 1 -ar 44100 W/voice.wav
for f in full voice; do ffmpeg -v error -i W/$f.wav -af "asetnsamples=882,astats=metadata=1:reset=1,ametadata=print:key=lavfi.astats.Overall.RMS_level:file=-" -f null - | grep -o "RMS_level=.*" | cut -d= -f2 > W/rms-$f.txt; done
paste W/rms-voice.txt W/rms-full.txt | awk '$1<-40{print $2}' | sort -n | awk '{a[NR]=$1}END{print "music while the voice is silent:", a[int(NR/2)+1], "dB over", NR/50, "s"}'
awk '$1>-30' W/rms-voice.txt | sort -n | awk '{a[NR]=$1}END{print "voice while talking:", a[int(NR/2)+1], "dB"}'

• These commands measure the level every 20 ms. The music is the full mix in the moments the isolated voice is silent.
• Music under the voice = the voice level minus the music level.
• Under 1 s of silence (an edit with every pause cut) is too little to trust: judge it on the spectrogram.
• Never subtract the isolated voice from the mix: it is not in phase with the original, so the result comes out louder than the voice.
• Without a key, judge the level on the spectrogram.

Write down where the music starts and which event gets which sound: cut, sticker, zoom, impact.

Zooms

On the sheets, measure the face height as a share of the frame height on 10 tiles or so, and list the jumps in face size from one tile to the next:

• a jump at a cut = a change of framing between two shots
• a jump inside a shot = a punch-in
• a slow growth over a shot = a push

Write the range (e.g. face 12 to 25 % of the frame), the punch-ins per 10 s, and whether there is a push. These numbers are the ceiling for your copy.

3. Write the style

video-agent/styles/<name>.md, in the user's language, with the same sections as short-editing's style.md. Each line gives a value and the measurement behind it:

# Style: <name>

Copied from <link>, measured on <date>. Applied on top of short-editing's style.md: what is not here stays as there.

## Cuts
- hard cut every 1.4 s on average (35 cuts in 50 s); no fade, no transition
## Framing
- face 12 to 25 % of the frame; punch-in 1.1 at most, about every 4 s, held until the next cut; slow push 0.6 %/s
## Captions
- ...
## Stickers and images
- ...
## Sound
- boom bap beat ~90 BPM from the hook impact, 12 dB under the voice, drops out 0.3 s on punch-ins
- a dry high click on most cuts (sfx/cut.wav), a pop on each sticker (sfx/pop.wav)
## Grade
- ffmpeg: eq=contrast=1.08:saturation=0.9,vignette=PI/5,unsharp=5:5:0.4
## Left out
- the AI video clips: replaced by your own footage or a callout
## How short-editing applies it
- the components to add to the composition and the props they take

Sound effects (in video-agent/styles/<name>/sfx/):

• With an ElevenLabs key, generate 2 or 3 takes per sound and keep the one closest to the original on the spectrogram:

  curl -s -X POST https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/sound-generation -H "xi-api-key: $ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" -H "content-type: application/json" -d '{"text":"single dry short high click, tight transient, no reverb","duration_seconds":0.5}' -o video-agent/styles/<name>/sfx/cut-a.mp3
  

• Otherwise, use a royalty-free library.

Stickers:

1. Generate them with /codex-images. Use the user's REAL photos as the face reference, never a generated face. Ask for a flat #00FF00 background, no shadow, no text.
2. Key the background out to a transparent PNG:

   ffmpeg -v error -y -i sticker.png -vf "colorkey=0x00FF00:0.3:0.08,despill=type=green" -pix_fmt rgba sticker-cut.png
   

Logos: every app named on screen shows its real logo, never a letter in a circle.

4. Test it

1. Pick a 10 to 20 s take of the user from video-agent/takes/.
2. Run /short-editing <take> style <name>. It reads the style file and adds what it describes to the composition: stickers on the word that names them, sound effects on the cuts, the grade.
3. The slug is <take slug>-<name>.

5. Compare before showing

Put the original on top and the copy below, at the same seconds:

ffmpeg -v error -y -i W/reel.mp4 -i video-agent/edits/<slug>/final.mp4 -filter_complex "[0:v]fps=1,scale=216:384,trim=end_frame=15,tile=15x1[a];[1:v]fps=1,scale=216:384,trim=end_frame=15,tile=15x1[b];[a][b]vstack" -frames:v 1 W/compare.jpg

Go tile by tile:

• type size and weight
• sticker and logo size (they fill the space like in the original)
• grade
• no fade where the original cuts hard
• captions off the mouth
• nothing upside down

Run the spectrogram on the copy too: the hits must land on the cuts, the beat must sit at the same level under the voice. Measure the face size on its sheets: no more zooms than the original, the face never bigger.

With sub-agents, give the compare sheet, the key stills and the list above to a fresh-eyes sub-agent while you check the sound and the zooms: it reports every tile that differs. Fix every gap before showing. The user should never be the one to spot it.

6. Deliver

Open final.mp4, then tell the user in a few lines:

• what was measured (seconds per shot, BPM, music level, zooms)
• what was copied, and what was left out and why
• where the style lives

From now on, /short-editing <take> style <name> uses it. Each time the user rejects something, write it in the style file. When the lesson is general, add it to references/learnings.md.