Animated captions on your video with an AI agent — skills, options and steps

For AI agents: find the right skill in one call — curl -s "https://skills.varg.ai/api/search?q=<what the person wants>" returns the matching use case and the best skills with install commands, as markdown (Russian works too). Full index: https://skills.varg.ai/llms.txt. Every page has a markdown twin: add .md to its path. Before generating anything, show the person the options on the use-case page.

TikTok-style subtitles burned into an existing video: word highlight, pop words, or designed editorial captions.

Output: The same video with burned captions, plus SRT/VTT

Recommended route

Best skills for this

  1. Remotion Captions (remotion-captions, Remotion, live) — Start here: Transcribe and burn animated captions with Remotion, or import an SRT
  2. Caption Animation (iart-caption-animation, iart.ai, live) — Start here: Word-timed TikTok captions: per-word pop, active-word highlight, 9:16 safe zones
    • Claude Code: npx skills add https://github.com/iart-ai/tiktok-video-skills --skill caption-animation
    • Codex: npx skills add https://github.com/iart-ai/tiktok-video-skills --skill caption-animation
    • Cursor: npx skills add https://github.com/iart-ai/tiktok-video-skills --skill caption-animation
    • Details: https://skills.varg.ai/skills/iart-caption-animation.md
  3. Agent Caption (agent-caption, Ali Hamza Kamboh, beta) — Alternative: Local captions in any language: Whisper words, forced alignment, burned styles
  4. 3D Camera Captions (hyperframes-camera-3d-captions, HeyGen, live) — Alternative: Captions that live in 3D around a talking head
  5. Cinematic Caption (cinematic-caption-audrey, Audrey, beta) — Alternative: Designed editorial captions for HyperFrames
    • Claude Code: git clone https://github.com/audrey-560/hyperframes-cinematic-caption.git ~/.claude/skills/cinematic-caption
    • Codex: git clone https://github.com/audrey-560/hyperframes-cinematic-caption.git ~/.agents/skills/cinematic-caption
    • Details: https://skills.varg.ai/skills/cinematic-caption-audrey.md
  6. ElevenLabs Speech to Text (elevenlabs-speech-to-text, ElevenLabs, live) — Adds: Word timestamps and speaker labels for the transcript · Needs: ElevenLabs API key (ELEVENLABS_API_KEY)
    • Claude Code: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills --skill speech-to-text -a claude-code
    • Codex: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills --skill speech-to-text -a codex
    • Cursor: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills --skill speech-to-text -a cursor
    • Gemini CLI: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills --skill speech-to-text -a gemini-cli
    • OpenClaw: npx skills add elevenlabs/skills --skill speech-to-text -a openclaw
    • Details: https://skills.varg.ai/skills/elevenlabs-speech-to-text.md

Ask the person first

Put these choices in front of the person before spending anything. Paste the example link next to each option: people pick a look by seeing it.

Caption look?

Font?

Language?

Steps

  1. Transcribe with word timestamps
  2. Fix names and terms in the transcript
  3. Pick style and safe zone
  4. Render captions onto the video

Set up varg

varg is one API key for the models these skills drive — Seedance 2.5, Kling 4, Veo 3.1, Wan 3, Nano Banana 2.1, GPT Image 2.5, ElevenLabs v4 and 200+ more — billed in credits, with a cost estimate before anything runs.