Framehand – one sentence in, a branded promo video out (open source)

Write one line about your business. Get a short, unique promo video.

Free and open source (MIT). Runs on your own computer. Never posts for you.

Try it · Install on Mac · Install on Windows · How it works · Contributing

Made from one line each: a barbershop, a café and a gym (9:16, for Reels and TikTok):

"Leo's Barbershop fresh fades in Velika Plana. Book today." · "Little Owl café. Weekend flat white, 2 for 1. Visit us on Main St this Saturday" · "Iron Current gym. 30-day starter, first week free."

Still frames: docs/media · Launch video: framehand-rose.vercel.app

FRAMEHAND runs on your own computer, and it can't post for you. Nothing is uploaded anywhere. When a video is ready, FRAMEHAND gives you the file and a caption, opens the upload page of the app you choose, and you click Post.

FRAMEHAND is a free app for small businesses (cafés, barbershops, gyms, shops, salons) that turns one plain sentence into a branded promo video for social media. No editing skills and no templates to fight with.

You type one line, e.g. "Little Owl Café. 2 for 1 flat whites before 10am. Come by today".

FRAMEHAND reads what it's about and picks a matching look and scene plan (cli/lib/compose-brief.js). Shops lead with their offer; looks that need a chart, a formula or a screenshot are skipped when you don't give one.

Your logo, colours and photo are layered in (cli/lib/brand-layer.js) and a short original soundtrack is made on your computer.

Each video is a small web page (HTML + GSAP animation). It is drawn frame by frame in your own Chrome (or Edge on Windows), and FFmpeg turns the frames into an MP4.

You get the video (9:16, 16:9 or both) plus a caption written for each app (cli/lib/caption.js), and you post it yourself.

The styles live in templates/; node cli/om.js templates lists them.

Open Terminal, paste this line, and press Enter:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/300SpartanDev/framehand/main/install.sh | bash

It downloads FRAMEHAND, installs what it needs, and puts a Start Framehand icon on your Desktop. To update later, run the same line again; your videos are kept.

Open PowerShell (press the Windows key, type PowerShell, press Enter), paste this line, and press Enter:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/300SpartanDev/framehand/main/install.ps1 | iex

It downloads FRAMEHAND to your user folder, installs Node.js and FFmpeg if they are missing (using winget, the app installer built into Windows 10 and 11), and puts a Start Framehand icon on your Desktop. Microsoft Edge, which comes with Windows, draws the frames, so you don't need Chrome. To update later, run the same line again; your videos are kept.

Get the framehand folder: download the latest release from https://github.com/300SpartanDev/framehand/releases/latest (under Assets, click Source code (zip)) and unzip it. The folder it makes (named like framehand-0.4.1) is your framehand folder. You can also click Code → Download ZIP on this page.

Install three free things (one time):

Node.js 22 or newer — https://nodejs.org (pick "LTS", run the installer)

FFmpeg (makes the video files) — no Homebrew needed: download ffmpeg and ffprobe from https://evermeet.cx/ffmpeg/ (or https://www.ffmpeg.org/download.html), unzip both, and put the two files in a folder called bin inside the framehand folder. If you already use Homebrew, brew install ffmpeg does the same.

Google Chrome — https://www.google.com/chrome/ (FRAMEHAND uses it quietly to draw each frame)

Open the framehand folder and double-click run_ui.command. (First time only: right-click it → Open → Open, because macOS asks about files from the internet. Do the same once for bin/ffmpeg and bin/ffprobe if macOS says they are from an unidentified developer.) If something is missing, it tells you what and opens the download page. On Windows, double-click run_ui.cmd instead (FFmpeg: winget install -e --id Gyan.FFmpeg, or put ffmpeg.exe and ffprobe.exe in the bin folder; Edge works as the browser).

Your browser opens FRAMEHAND. Type one line, for example "Little Owl Café. 2 for 1 flat whites before 10am. Come by today" (or tap one of the examples), and press Make video.

Prefer the Terminal? In the framehand folder run:

node cli/om.js ui

Then open the address it prints (normally http://127.0.0.1:7870/).

A different video every time. FRAMEHAND reads what your line is about (a barbershop, a café, an app, a gym…) and picks a matching style — a printed shop poster, a café chalkboard, market-stall stamps, big bold type, a keynote-style launch, a whiteboard sketch, a paper collage, a chart and more. Shops lead with their offer. Press Try another style, or Make 3 versions to see three takes side by side and pick one.

Your words, your numbers. It only shows numbers you wrote. No made-up statistics, no stock photos. Add your logo and an optional photo of your shop, product or app (JPG, PNG or iPhone HEIC): click, drag it anywhere onto the window, or paste it. Turn on Remember my logo & colour and they are there next time.

Vertical first. Videos are 9:16 (Instagram Reels, TikTok, Shorts) unless you pick Wide (YouTube, X) or Both. The vertical video is laid out for phones: words, buttons and your logo stay clear of the app's own buttons.

Quick look first. See three still frames in a few seconds before you make the full video.

Music. A short original soundtrack is made on your computer (no internet). Switch it off with the Music toggle.

A caption written for each app. Brand, offer and call to action, a few fitting hashtags, the right length for X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or LinkedIn. "Made with FRAMEHAND" is off unless you turn it on.

Your videos stay listed in the app, so you can download, share or delete them later.

Safe zones. Switch them on over the phone preview to see where TikTok and Reels put their buttons and caption.

Keyboard. ⌘ Enter (Ctrl Enter on Windows) makes the video.

Sharing

Under Share, every app has three buttons: Copy caption (written for that app), Download (the right video — vertical for Reels, TikTok and Shorts) and Open (that app's upload page). Download all gets every app's video and caption in one .zip. You attach the video, paste the caption and click Post yourself.

Everything you make — videos, quick looks, uploaded logos and photos, share packs, your remembered logo and colour — is kept on your computer in one folder, outside the FRAMEHAND folder, so it never ends up in a copy you share:

The video engine also keeps a small notes file and a soundtrack history in ~/.framehand.

To start fresh (delete all of it), run npm run clean in the FRAMEHAND folder (or node cli/om.js reset --yes). node cli/om.js reset without --yes only shows what it would delete.

The command-line tool is node cli/om.js (also installed as om / framehand if you npm link).

Requirements: Node.js 22+, FFmpeg (ffmpeg and ffprobe), and Chrome, Chromium, Edge or Brave (or set OM_CHROME to a browser's path).

Tests: npm test. CI runs the tests on Linux and a render smoke test on Windows (workflow). The agent skill lives in skills/framehand/SKILL.md.

Bug reports, style ideas and pull requests are welcome. The short version:

Styles live in templates/, the engine in cli/lib/ and runtime/. New here? Look for issues labelled good first issue. Details: CONTRIBUTING.md.

FRAMEHAND is a consumer-focused version of an open-source motion-graphics engine, originally published under the MIT License (Copyright (c) 2026 Huashu). See NOTICE.md, and FORK.md for what this version adds. Fonts and libraries (including GSAP): THIRD_PARTY.md.

MIT — see LICENSE and NOTICE.md. Third-party parts: THIRD_PARTY.md. Notes on this version: FORK.md.

If FRAMEHAND saved you an afternoon of editing, a ⭐ helps other small businesses find it.