Skip to content

PROVIDERS.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
727 lines (505 loc) · 28 KB

PROVIDERS.md

File metadata and controls

727 lines (505 loc) · 28 KB

OpenMontage Provider Guide

Everything you need to know about every provider in OpenMontage — setup instructions, pricing, free tiers, and what each unlocks.

Quick Start: What Should I Set Up?

Start free, add paid providers as you need them. Here's the recommended order:

Step Cost What to set up What it unlocks
1 $0 Pexels + Pixabay Stock photos and videos — enough to produce basic videos
2 $0 Google API key TTS with 700+ voices (1M chars/month free) + $300 new account credit
3 $0 ElevenLabs Premium TTS + music + SFX (10K chars/month free)
4 $0 Piper (local install) Fully offline TTS — no API key, no cost, no network
5 ~$0.03/image fal.ai FLUX images + Kling/Veo/MiniMax video + Recraft — broad single-key image + video coverage
6 ~$0.04/image OpenAI DALL-E 3 images + OpenAI TTS
7 ~$0.04/image Google Imagen Imagen 4 images (shares the Google API key)
8 $12/month Runway Gen-4 video — highest quality AI video
9 pay-as-you-go HeyGen Avatar videos, multi-model video gateway
10 pay-as-you-go Suno Full song generation with vocals and lyrics
11 $0 + GPU Local video gen WAN 2.1, Hunyuan, CogVideo, LTX — free, offline
12 $0 + GPU Local Diffusion Stable Diffusion images — free, offline

Environment Variable Summary

# .env — add your keys here

# FREE (no cost, ever)
PEXELS_API_KEY=              # Stock photos + videos
PIXABAY_API_KEY=             # Stock photos + videos

# GOOGLE (one key, two tools, generous free tier)
GOOGLE_API_KEY=              # Google TTS + Google Imagen

# VOICE + MUSIC
ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=          # TTS, music, sound effects (10K chars/month free)
OPENAI_API_KEY=              # OpenAI TTS + DALL-E 3 images
XAI_API_KEY=                 # xAI Grok image generation/editing + Grok video generation

# MULTI-MODEL GATEWAY (one key, 6+ tools)
FAL_KEY=                     # FLUX, Recraft, Kling, Veo, MiniMax video

# VIDEO
HEYGEN_API_KEY=              # HeyGen avatar video gateway
RUNWAY_API_KEY=              # Runway Gen-4 video (direct)
SUNO_API_KEY=                # Suno music generation

# LOCAL (no keys needed — just GPU + install)
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_ENABLED=     # Set to "true" for local video gen
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=       # wan2.1-1.3b, wan2.1-14b, hunyuan-1.5, ltx2-local, cogvideo-5b

Cloud Providers

xAI — Grok Image + Video

Best if you want one provider for image edits and reference-conditioned short video. Grok covers both image generation/editing and video generation under one key.

Tools unlocked: grok_image, grok_video Env var: XAI_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Create an xAI developer account
  2. Generate an API key in the xAI developer console
  3. Add to .env: XAI_API_KEY=xai-...

What it's best for

  • Image editing and style transfer
  • Multi-image composites into one generated frame
  • Short reference-image videos where a person, garment, or product must carry into motion

Pricing

Current xAI docs pricing for the Grok media models:

Model Price
grok-imagine-image $0.02 per generated image
grok-imagine-image input images (edits/composites) $0.002 per input image
grok-imagine-video at 480p $0.05/sec
grok-imagine-video at 720p $0.07/sec
grok-imagine-video input images $0.002 per input image

OpenMontage now uses those published rates in the Grok tool estimators.

fal.ai — Multi-Model Gateway

Broad single-key coverage. One API key unlocks image and video providers across multiple models.

Tools unlocked: flux_image, recraft_image, kling_video, veo_video, minimax_video Env var: FAL_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to fal.ai and click Sign up (GitHub or Google)
  2. Navigate to fal.ai/dashboard/keys
  3. Click Create Key, copy it
  4. Add to .env: FAL_KEY=your-key-here

Pricing

No subscription — pure pay-as-you-go, no minimum spend.

Image generation:

Model Price Per $1
FLUX Pro v1.1 $0.05/image 20 images
FLUX Dev $0.03/image 33 images
Recraft v3 ~$0.04/image 25 images

Video generation:

Model Price Per $1
Kling 2.5 Turbo Pro $0.07/sec 14 seconds
MiniMax ~$0.05/sec 20 seconds
Veo 3 $0.40/sec 2.5 seconds
WAN 2.5 $0.05/sec 20 seconds

Free tier: None — but $0 to start, you only pay for what you use.

ElevenLabs — Voice, Music, Sound Effects

Premium voice quality. Best TTS for narration-heavy videos. Also generates music and sound effects.

Tools unlocked: elevenlabs_tts, music_gen Env var: ELEVENLABS_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to elevenlabs.io and click Sign up
  2. Go to Profile (bottom-left) > API Keys, or visit elevenlabs.io/app/settings/api-keys
  3. Click Create API Key, name it, copy it
  4. Add to .env: ELEVENLABS_API_KEY=xi_your-key-here

Pricing

Plan Price Characters/month Key features
Free $0 10,000 3 custom voices, API access, attribution required
Starter $5/mo 30,000 No attribution
Creator $22/mo 100,000 Professional voice cloning
Pro $99/mo 500,000 96kbps audio, usage analytics
Scale $330/mo 2,000,000 Priority support

Free tier: 10,000 characters/month (roughly 2-3 minutes of narration). API access included. Music generation and sound effects also available on free tier with limited credits.

Google — TTS + Imagen (Shared Key)

One key, two tools. Google Cloud TTS has 700+ voices in 50+ languages — the strongest localization option. Imagen 4 generates high-quality images.

Tools unlocked: google_tts, google_imagen Env var: GOOGLE_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to Google AI Studio and sign in
  2. Navigate to aistudio.google.com/apikey
  3. Click Create API Key, select a Google Cloud project
  4. Copy the key
  5. Add to .env: GOOGLE_API_KEY=AIza...

For TTS specifically, you also need to enable the Text-to-Speech API:

  1. Visit console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/texttospeech.googleapis.com
  2. Click Enable
  3. Make sure your API key's restrictions allow the Text-to-Speech API

For Imagen, enable the Generative Language API:

  1. Visit console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/generativelanguage.googleapis.com
  2. Click Enable

Google TTS Pricing

Voice Type Free tier Paid (per 1M chars) Notes
Standard 1M chars/month $4.00 Basic quality, fast
WaveNet 1M chars/month $16.00 Natural-sounding
Neural2 1M chars/month $16.00 Best quality
Studio — $24.00 Professional studio voices
Chirp — $4.00 Conversational style

The free tiers apply independently — you get 1M Standard AND 1M WaveNet AND 1M Neural2 characters per month free. That's roughly 250+ minutes of narration per month at zero cost.

Google Imagen Pricing

Model Price per image
Imagen 4 Fast $0.02
Imagen 4 Standard $0.04
Imagen 4 Ultra $0.06

Free tier for Imagen: None. Paid tier only.

New account bonus: Google Cloud offers $300 in free credits for new accounts (90-day trial), applicable to both TTS and Imagen.

Google TTS Voice Types

Google TTS offers 700+ voices across 50+ languages. Voice names follow the pattern {language}-{type}-{letter}:

Type Example Quality Cost
Chirp 3 HD en-US-Chirp3-HD-Orus Best (2024, most natural) Mid — default
Standard en-US-Standard-A Good Cheapest
WaveNet en-US-WaveNet-D Very good Mid
Neural2 en-US-Neural2-D Excellent Mid
Studio en-US-Studio-O Professional Highest
Journey en-US-Journey-D Conversational (long-form) Mid

Recommended voices: en-US-Chirp3-HD-Orus (male, rich/cinematic), en-US-Chirp3-HD-Aoede (female, warm). These are Google's newest tier — most natural-sounding, uses the v1beta1 endpoint automatically.

Languages include: English (US, UK, AU, IN), Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese), Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, and 30+ more.

OpenAI — TTS + Image Generation

Solid all-rounder. DALL-E 3 handles complex multi-element compositions well. TTS is fast and affordable.

Tools unlocked: openai_tts, openai_image Env var: OPENAI_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to platform.openai.com/signup and create an account
  2. Add a payment method at platform.openai.com/account/billing
  3. Navigate to platform.openai.com/api-keys
  4. Click Create new secret key, name it, copy it
  5. Add to .env: OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

TTS Pricing

Model Price per 1M characters
tts-1 $15.00
tts-1-hd $30.00
gpt-4o-mini-tts $12.00

Image Pricing

Model Size Quality Price per image
DALL-E 3 1024x1024 standard $0.040
DALL-E 3 1024x1024 hd $0.080
DALL-E 3 1024x1792 standard $0.080
DALL-E 3 1024x1792 hd $0.120

Free tier: None. Requires prepaid billing. Previously offered $5 in free credits for new accounts (discontinued for most signups).

Runway — Gen-3/Gen-4 Video

Highest-rated AI video quality. #1 on Elo rankings. Professional-grade video generation with Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, Gen-4 Turbo, and Gen-4 Aleph models.

Tools unlocked: runway_video Env var: RUNWAY_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to dev.runwayml.com and create a developer account
  2. Subscribe to a paid plan (Standard or above — API requires subscription)
  3. Generate an API key from the developer portal
  4. Add to .env: RUNWAY_API_KEY=key_...

Pricing

Plan Price Credits/month Video capacity
Free $0 125 one-time ~5 seconds Gen-4
Standard $12/mo 625 ~25 seconds Gen-4
Pro $28/mo 2,250 ~90 seconds Gen-4
Unlimited $76/mo Unlimited (Explore Mode) Unlimited Gen-4 Turbo

API pricing (approximate):

Model Price per second
Gen-3 Alpha Turbo ~$0.05
Gen-4 Turbo ~$0.05
Gen-4 Aleph ~$0.15

Free tier: 125 one-time credits (no monthly renewal). Enough for about 5 seconds of Gen-4 video. API access requires a paid subscription.

Higgsfield — Multi-Model Video Orchestrator

Multi-model video platform. Routes to Kling 3.0, Veo 3.1, Sora 2, WAN 2.5, and proprietary Soul Cinema through a single API. Includes Soul ID for character consistency across clips.

Tools unlocked: higgsfield_video Env vars: HIGGSFIELD_API_KEY + HIGGSFIELD_API_SECRET (or combined HIGGSFIELD_KEY=key:secret)

Setup

  1. Go to cloud.higgsfield.ai and create an account
  2. Subscribe to a plan (Starter or above for API access)
  3. Navigate to API Keys section at cloud.higgsfield.ai/api-keys
  4. Generate an API key and secret
  5. Add to .env: 
    HIGGSFIELD_API_KEY=your-api-key
HIGGSFIELD_API_SECRET=your-api-secret

Pricing

Plan Price Notes
Free $0 Limited credits
Starter $15/mo Basic allocation
Plus $34/mo Mid-tier, ~33-56 Kling 3.0 clips
Ultra $84/mo High volume

Per-generation costs (approximate, via credits):

Model Cost per clip
Kling 3.0 ~$0.10 (cheapest)
WAN 2.5 ~$0.10
Soul Cinema ~$0.15
Veo 3.1 ~$0.50
Sora 2 ~$0.50

Free tier: Limited credits on signup. No monthly renewal on free plan.

HeyGen — Avatar Video Gateway

Multi-model video gateway. Access VEO, Sora, Runway, Kling, and Seedance through a single API.

Tools unlocked: heygen_video Env var: HEYGEN_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to app.heygen.com/register and create an account
  2. Navigate to the API section in settings
  3. Generate your API key
  4. Add API balance (prepaid, separate from web plan credits)
  5. Add to .env: HEYGEN_API_KEY=your-key-here

Pricing

Service Price
Avatar video (Engine III) $0.017/sec
Avatar video (Engine IV) $0.10/sec
Prompt to Video $0.033/sec
Video Translation (Speed) $0.05/sec
Video Translation (Precision) $0.10/sec

Web plans:

Plan Price Notes
Free $0 1 credit (demo)
Creator $24/mo Limited credits
Business $72/mo API access, more credits

Free tier: 1 credit on web platform. API is pay-as-you-go with prepaid balance.

Suno — AI Music Generation

Full songs with vocals and lyrics. Any genre, up to 8 minutes. Instrumentals or vocal tracks.

Tools unlocked: suno_music Env var: SUNO_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to suno.com and create a Suno account
  2. For API access, go to sunoapi.org and create an account
  3. Navigate to the dashboard and copy your API key
  4. Add credits (1 credit = $0.005 USD)
  5. Add to .env: SUNO_API_KEY=your-key-here

Pricing

Suno platform:

Plan Price Credits Notes
Free $0 50/day ~10 songs/day, non-commercial only
Pro $10/mo 2,500/mo Commercial license
Premier $30/mo 10,000/mo Commercial license

API (via sunoapi.org): Pay-as-you-go, 1 credit = $0.005. Each generation produces 2 tracks.

Pexels — Free Stock Media

Completely free. No cost, no attribution required, commercial use allowed.

Tools unlocked: pexels_image, pexels_video Env var: PEXELS_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to pexels.com/join and create a free account
  2. Navigate to pexels.com/api
  3. Click Your API Key or request API access
  4. Copy your key from the dashboard
  5. Add to .env: PEXELS_API_KEY=your-key-here

Pricing

Completely free. No paid tiers. No attribution required. Commercial use allowed.

  • 200 requests/hour
  • 20,000 requests/month
  • Photo and video search + download

Pixabay — Free Stock Media

Completely free. 5M+ royalty-free images and videos.

Tools unlocked: pixabay_image, pixabay_video Env var: PIXABAY_API_KEY

Setup

  1. Go to pixabay.com/accounts/register and create a free account
  2. Navigate to pixabay.com/api/docs
  3. Your API key is displayed at the top of the docs page (after login)
  4. Copy the key
  5. Add to .env: PIXABAY_API_KEY=your-key-here

Pricing

Completely free. No paid tiers. No attribution required. Commercial use allowed.

  • ~100 requests/minute
  • 5,000 requests/hour
  • Photo and video search + download
  • Standard API limited to 1280px images (full resolution requires editorial API)

Local Providers (Free, No API Key)

These providers run entirely on your machine. No network, no API key, no cost. Some require a GPU.

Remotion — Programmatic Video Composition

React-based video rendering. Turns still images into animated video with spring physics, animated text cards, stat cards, charts, and transitions. This is the key fallback when no video generation providers are configured — the agent generates images and Remotion animates them into professional-looking video.

Tool: video_compose (with operation="render" — auto-routes to Remotion when needed) Runtime: CPU (Node.js required) Env var: None

Setup

# Included in make setup, or install manually:
cd remotion-composer && npm install && cd ..

Requires Node.js 18+ and npx. The remotion-composer/ project is included in the repo.

What Remotion Renders

Component What it produces
TextCard Animated title/body text with spring physics entrance
StatCard Animated statistics with count-up animations
ProgressBar Animated progress indicators
CalloutBox Highlighted callout panels with icon animations
ComparisonCard Side-by-side comparison layouts
BarChart / LineChart / PieChart Animated data visualizations
KPIGrid Multi-metric dashboard cards
Image scenes Still images with spring-animated motion (replaces Ken Burns)

When Does Remotion Activate?

The video_compose tool's render operation auto-detects when Remotion is needed:

  • Cuts contain still images (.png, .jpg, etc.)
  • Cuts have type set to text_card, stat_card, chart, etc.
  • Cuts specify animation or transition_in/transition_out

If Remotion is not installed, compositions fall back to FFmpeg Ken Burns pan-and-zoom — functional but less engaging.

Cost: Free. Always local.

HyperFrames - HTML/CSS/GSAP Video Composition

GSAP-native local rendering. HyperFrames is the preferred runtime for motion-graphics-heavy HTML compositions and the character-animation pipeline's rigged SVG character acting.

Tool: hyperframes_compose directly, or video_compose with edit_decisions.render_runtime="hyperframes" Runtime: CPU (Node.js >= 22, FFmpeg, and npx required) Env var: None

Setup

node --version
ffmpeg -version
npx --yes hyperframes doctor

The CLI is consumed as npx hyperframes. Do not use npx @hyperframes/cli; that package name is not the OpenMontage runtime path.

What HyperFrames Renders

Use case What it produces
Kinetic typography HTML/CSS text animation driven by GSAP timelines
Product / launch videos Structured HTML scenes, registry blocks, and transitions
Website-to-video Browser-captured site compositions with HyperFrames validation
Character animation SVG character rigs, pose/action timelines, and GSAP acting beats rendered to renders/final.mp4

HyperFrames workspaces live under projects/<project-name>/hyperframes/. Final videos still follow the normal OpenMontage convention: projects/<project-name>/renders/final.mp4.

Cost: Free. Always local.

Piper TTS — Offline Text-to-Speech

Completely free, fully offline TTS. No network required. Good quality for drafts and budget-constrained projects.

Tool: piper_tts Runtime: CPU (no GPU needed) Env var: None

Setup

# Install via pip
pip install piper-tts

# Or download the binary from GitHub
# https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/releases

# Download a voice model (first run downloads automatically)
piper --download-dir ~/.piper/models --model en_US-lessac-medium

Available voices: ~30 English voices plus voices for German, French, Spanish, Italian, and other languages. Lower variety than cloud providers but completely free and offline.

Quality: Good for drafts, internal videos, and budget projects. For client-facing narration, use ElevenLabs or Google TTS.

Local Video Generation (GPU Required)

Free AI video generation. Requires an NVIDIA GPU with sufficient VRAM.

Tools: wan_video, hunyuan_video, cogvideo_video, ltx_video_local Runtime: Local GPU (CUDA required) Env vars: VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_ENABLED=true, VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=<model>

Setup

# 1. Install the GPU stack
make install-gpu
# Or manually:
pip install diffusers transformers accelerate torch pillow requests

# 2. Enable local generation in .env
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_ENABLED=true

# 3. Choose a model based on your GPU VRAM
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=wan2.1-1.3b      # 6GB+ VRAM (entry-level)
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=wan2.1-14b       # 24GB+ VRAM (best local quality)
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=hunyuan-1.5      # 12GB+ VRAM
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=ltx2-local       # 8GB+ VRAM (fastest)
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=cogvideo-5b      # 10GB+ VRAM
VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_MODEL=cogvideo-2b      # 6GB+ VRAM (lightest)

Model Comparison

Model VRAM Quality Speed Best for
WAN 2.1 (1.3B) 6GB Good Fast Entry-level GPU, quick iteration
WAN 2.1 (14B) 24GB Excellent Slow Best quality-to-VRAM ratio
Hunyuan 1.5 12GB Very good Medium Mid-range GPUs
LTX-2 8GB Good Fastest Quick drafts, lowest latency
CogVideo (5B) 10GB Good Medium Balanced option
CogVideo (2B) 6GB Fair Fast Low-VRAM experimentation

All local models support: Image-to-video, text-to-video, offline generation, seeded reproducibility.

Local Diffusion — Offline Image Generation (GPU Required)

Free Stable Diffusion image generation. No API cost, fully offline.

Tool: local_diffusion Runtime: Local GPU (CUDA required) Env var: None (enable by installing dependencies)

Setup

pip install diffusers transformers accelerate torch

First run downloads the model (~4GB). Subsequent runs use the cached model.

VRAM requirement: 4GB+ (8GB recommended for 1024x1024 images)

Supports: Negative prompts, seeds, custom sizes. Quality is lower than FLUX or DALL-E 3 but completely free and offline.

LTX-2 on Modal — Self-Hosted Cloud GPU

Run LTX-2 on Modal's cloud GPUs. Your own endpoint, your own scale. More consistent than local GPU, cheaper than commercial APIs.

Tool: ltx_video_modal Runtime: Cloud (self-hosted) Env var: MODAL_LTX2_ENDPOINT_URL

Setup

  1. Create a Modal account
  2. Deploy the LTX-2 endpoint (see Modal docs)
  3. Set the endpoint URL in .env: MODAL_LTX2_ENDPOINT_URL=https://your-modal-endpoint

Modal pricing: ~$0.99/hour for A100 GPU time. Cost per video depends on generation time.

Other Local Tools (Always Available)

These tools require only FFmpeg or Python packages — no GPU, no API key.

Tool Install What it does
FFmpeg tools (video_compose, video_stitch, video_trimmer, audio_mixer, audio_enhance, color_grade, face_enhance, frame_sampler, scene_detect) brew install ffmpeg / sudo apt install ffmpeg / winget install FFmpeg Video editing, audio processing, color grading, analysis
Transcriber pip install faster-whisper Speech-to-text with word-level timestamps
Background Remove pip install rembg (CPU) or pip install rembg[gpu] Remove image/video backgrounds
Upscale pip install realesrgan (requires PyTorch + CUDA) Real-ESRGAN image/video upscaling
Face Restore pip install gfpgan (requires PyTorch) CodeFormer/GFPGAN face restoration
Code Snippet pip install Pygments Pillow Syntax-highlighted code images
Diagram Gen npm install -g @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli Mermaid diagram rendering
Math Animate pip install manim ManimCE mathematical animations
Subtitle Gen No install needed SRT/VTT subtitle file generation
Video Understand pip install transformers torch CLIP/BLIP-2 visual analysis
Talking Head Clone SadTalker Avatar animation from photo + audio
Lip Sync Clone Wav2Lip Audio-driven lip synchronization

Provider-to-Tool Mapping

Provider Env Var Tools Unlocked Cost
Pexels PEXELS_API_KEY pexels_image, pexels_video Free
Pixabay PIXABAY_API_KEY pixabay_image, pixabay_video Free
Piper — (install only) piper_tts Free
Google GOOGLE_API_KEY google_tts, google_imagen Free tier + paid
ElevenLabs ELEVENLABS_API_KEY elevenlabs_tts, music_gen Free tier + paid
fal.ai FAL_KEY flux_image, recraft_image, kling_video, veo_video, minimax_video Pay-as-you-go
OpenAI OPENAI_API_KEY openai_tts, openai_image Paid only
xAI XAI_API_KEY grok_image, grok_video Paid only
Runway RUNWAY_API_KEY runway_video Free trial + paid
Higgsfield HIGGSFIELD_API_KEY + HIGGSFIELD_API_SECRET higgsfield_video Subscription ($15-84/mo)
HeyGen HEYGEN_API_KEY heygen_video Pay-as-you-go
Suno SUNO_API_KEY suno_music Pay-as-you-go
Local GPU VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_ENABLED wan_video, hunyuan_video, cogvideo_video, ltx_video_local Free (GPU required)
Local Diffusion — (install only) local_diffusion Free (GPU required)
Modal MODAL_LTX2_ENDPOINT_URL ltx_video_modal Self-hosted cloud

Capability Coverage

How many providers cover each capability:

Capability Cloud Providers Local Providers Free Options
Image Generation FLUX, Grok, Google Imagen, DALL-E 3, Recraft Local Diffusion Pexels, Pixabay (stock)
Video Generation Grok, Kling, Runway, Veo, Higgsfield, MiniMax, HeyGen WAN, Hunyuan, CogVideo, LTX Pexels, Pixabay (stock)
Text-to-Speech ElevenLabs, Google TTS, OpenAI Piper Piper, Google free tier, ElevenLabs free tier
Music Generation ElevenLabs, Suno — ElevenLabs free tier
Post-Production — FFmpeg (compose, stitch, trim, mix, enhance, grade) All free
Analysis — WhisperX, Scene Detect, Frame Sampler, CLIP/BLIP-2 All free
Enhancement — Upscale, BG Remove, Face Enhance, Face Restore All free
Avatar — SadTalker, Wav2Lip All free

FAQ

Q: What's the absolute minimum I need to produce a video? A: FFmpeg + Node.js (both free, local). FFmpeg handles video assembly, audio mixing, and subtitles. With Node.js, Remotion renders still images into animated video — so even without any video generation API, the agent generates images and Remotion turns them into professional-looking video with spring animations, text cards, and transitions. Add Piper TTS for free narration and Pexels/Pixabay for free stock footage.

Q: I don't have any video generation providers. Can I still make videos? A: Yes. The agent generates still images (via any image provider — even free stock from Pexels/Pixabay) and Remotion composes them into animated video with spring physics transitions, text cards, stat cards, and charts. This is the default path for explainer and animation pipelines when no video gen is configured.

Q: What's one low-friction way to get AI-generated images and video? A: fal.ai (FAL_KEY) is one pay-as-you-go option with broad single-key coverage. It unlocks FLUX images plus multiple video providers. No subscription — pay only for what you generate.

Q: I have a GPU. What can I run locally for free? A: Set VIDEO_GEN_LOCAL_ENABLED=true and install diffusers. You get WAN 2.1, Hunyuan, CogVideo, and LTX video generation plus Stable Diffusion image generation — all free, all offline.

Q: Which TTS provider should I use? A: For quality → ElevenLabs. For localization (50+ languages) → Google TTS. For budget → Google free tier (1M chars/month). For offline → Piper.

Q: Do I need all these providers? A: No. Start with what you have. The selector pattern auto-routes to whatever's available. Missing a provider? The system falls through to the next one automatically.