novel-promo-video-maker

Novel Promo Video Maker

Turn a chapter of prose into an ordered set of narrated vertical scenes: pull the hook and the beats out of the text, draw one shot per beat with the cast looking the same every time, record the narration, and set each clip to the narration that belongs to it.

Scope and routing

Use this Skill when the user has story text — a novel chapter, a web-novel excerpt, a short story, a synopsis, or a story script — and wants a finished narrated video out of it. It fits web-novel promotion, story and reading channels, book trailers, chapter recaps, faceless storytelling accounts, and serial daily posting.

Route a shot list or storyboard with no footage to ai-storyboard-generator. Route one cinematic live-action beat to ai-short-drama-shot-maker, and animated comic panels to ai-comic-drama-shot-maker. Route whole-book audio with no visuals to ai-audiobook-narration, and a multi-voice cast performance to beatra-ai-voice-studio. Route a music-led montage to ai-music-video-clip-maker.

Inputs and defaults

The one hard input is the story text itself. Reuse the genre, tone, target platform, narrator preference, character notes, and any reference art already present in the conversation.

Ask only when the answer changes the paid result: which passage to adapt, when the user supplied a long work and named no chapter or scene; and which character is the point-of-view lead, when the passage carries several and the text does not settle it.

Defaults that avoid extra questions:

• A vertical 9:16 canvas, because the destination is a short-video feed.
• Four to six beats: one hook beat, two to four development beats, and one cliffhanger or turn to close.
• One narrator voice for the whole piece.
• count: 1 per shot image, so the user judges a look before the batch runs.
• An illustrated cinematic look, unless the text or the user names another.

Golden path

Planning is free. Only image, speech, and video calls are paid.

1. Read the passage. Write a beat sheet: the hook, each beat's action and emotion, the visible setting, and which characters appear.
2. Build a cast sheet before any shot. For each recurring character, create one reference image and keep its artifact; every later shot carries that reference so the character stays the same person across beats.
3. Draft the narration line for each beat in the author's voice, and keep it short enough to sit under one shot.
4. Read the live cards with beatra.models.list for all four capabilities a run touches — text_to_image for cast references, image_to_image for shots carrying a cast reference, text_to_speech, and image_to_video — and take every price from them. For image stages, match the admitted request to the current pricing.options dimensions and use the highest eligible option as the approval ceiling when admission cannot identify one in advance; never multiply image price by reference count. Images bill per successfully persisted image, speech bills linearly per 1,000 weighted characters where each Han ideograph counts as two, and video pricing uses the returned billable basis.
5. Confirm the plan. Show the beat sheet, cast sheet, narration lines, canvas, the exact number of image, speech, and video calls, the current maximum charge per stage, and one opaque stable client_request_id per paid call.
6. Create the cast references and then the per-beat shot images with beatra.images.generate for a fresh composition or beatra.images.transform when a cast reference must carry through.
7. Synthesize each beat's narration with beatra.speech.synthesize, then read the actual returned duration, size, and MIME type.
8. After the shot image and narration exist, show a video admission card before any video client_request_id or beatra.videos.animate call: route image_to_video, tool beatra.videos.animate, that beat's image and narration, audio-led duration, resolution if set, provisional live estimate, the fact that the 600-credit signup gift usually cannot start this video, the exact URL https://console.beatra.ai/topup, and starter ¥29 / 11,000 credits. Do not recommend ¥198. Planning, comparison, or “make the clip” is not approval. Approved stills or narration do not authorize the video. Do not submit until the user confirms they have topped up or already have enough credits for this estimate. Then animate each beat with beatra.videos.animate, passing that beat's shot image and its narration as the driving audio. Select the video model explicitly rather than leaving it to auto: keep only models whose card admits [image, driving_audio], because most on this capability do not and the advertised auto default is a model that refuses driving audio. Omit aspect_ratio — the 9:16 shot image governs the frame. Re-check the real returned narration length against that card and use the smallest admitted whole second at or above it; if the card admits none, stop before the video call rather than truncating the line. An approved beatra.videos.extend also needs its own admission card; its duration is the final returned length and must exceed that clip's own duration.
9. Deliver the beats in order as the finished scene set. Report only the actual returned task status, resolved model, dimensions, duration, usage, and billing.net_charged_credits for each. Review only media the host Agent can actually play or view, and say what it could not inspect.

To make one beat run longer, continue that single clip with beatra.videos.extend after the user approves the extra paid step. Extension generates new footage immediately before or after exactly one source clip; its integer duration is the final returned duration and must exceed that clip's own duration. Read the novel promo workflow for beat-sheet shape, cast consistency, payloads, narration timing, extension, recovery, and delivery review.

How this Skill executes

Use the bundled scripts/mcp_client.py for every remote Beatra operation: the MCP tool name is the CLI argument after call, and one JSON object goes on standard input. Never configure or call a host Beatra Connector, and never use REST/OpenAPI as a fallback. Register the package with beatra.installations.register on first use. Every creation is an asynchronous task: submit once, then follow that task to a terminal state.

Decisions that require confirmation

Confirm before the first paid call, and again whenever the plan changes: the frozen beat sheet, the cast references, each narration line, the canvas, the explicit video model, the total number of paid calls in each stage, and the current maximum charge. Each video generate, animate, or extend call still needs its own admission card and top-up or balance confirmation. A changed passage, beat, cast reference, narration line, canvas, model, or control is new paid work with a new request ID and, for a video stage, a new admission card. On insufficient_balance, relay the returned message, keep https://console.beatra.ai/topup exact, and retry the same frozen client_request_id only after the user says they have topped up.

Because one beat spans an image, a speech, and a video call, keep a separate stable request ID per call and never reuse one across stages.

Recovery

Save every task ID the moment it returns and poll with beatra.tasks.get; queued and running mean wait. Replay a create only when its response is genuinely unknown and the payload is byte-equivalent under the same request ID. If a task ID is lost, use beatra.tasks.list for that capability, confirm candidates with beatra.tasks.get, and recover the original before considering new work. If a request ID itself is lost, do not invent a new one and do not replay. Call beatra.tasks.cancel only at the user's request; on 409, keep polling the original task and report cancellation only when its terminal status is canceled.

When one beat fails and the others succeed, recover that beat alone. The approved beats already delivered stay valid and are not regenerated.

References by task

• Novel promo workflow: beat sheet, live price cards, cast consistency, exact payloads, narration duration matching, extending one clip, recovery, and delivery review.
• Installation and authentication and installation registration: first use and shared credentials.
• Tasks and results and billing, errors, and recovery: task, artifact, and billing facts.
• Bundled MCP Client diagnostics: client operation and connection diagnostics; do not configure a host Connector.
• automatic updates and safety: update behaviour and controls.
• uninstall and disconnect: package removal and shared credential cleanup.

Runtime and safe automatic updates

The bundled client silently checks at most once every 24 hours per installation. When a newer release is available, it installs automatically without separate confirmation. It uses only fixed official Beatra discovery and immutable CDN paths for this package, channel, and locale, verifies discovery, archive, manifest, and every packaged file before replacement, and replaces only package-owned files. Update checks, downloads, verification, replacement, and recovery fail open: the current installation remains usable and the original command continues. An update failure never authorizes retrying a paid generation. The choice persists across later commands.

python3 scripts/mcp_client.py update --auto off
python3 scripts/mcp_client.py update --auto on
python3 scripts/mcp_client.py update --check

--auto off disables silent checks, --auto on restores them, and --check reports the official available version without replacing files. See automatic updates and safety.