61,487 stars · Apache-2.0, read from /blob/main/LICENSE, plain and unmodified, 'Copyright 2026 HeyGen, Inc.' · v0.8.150 of 2026-10-12; the release page reads '12 Oct 14:18' with no year and the release BODY states 'Released on 2026-10-12', corroborated by ungh pushedAt 2026-10-12T14:17:43Z one minute earlier. The npm package hyperframes is at 0.8.148, two patches behind the GitHub tag. · Track this in Scout
Renders a video file from an HTML page, stepping a headless browser through one frame at a time.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it does
You start a project with one command, and it writes the starting files. You then write the composition as ordinary HTML. Timing lives in data attributes on the elements: data-start says when a piece appears, data-duration says how long it stays, data-track-index says which layer it sits on. Movement comes from whichever animation library the page already uses — GSAP, plain CSS, Lottie, Three.js and others are supported, as long as the animation can be moved to an exact moment on demand. A preview command serves the page in a browser and reloads it as you edit. The render command then opens the page in headless Chrome (a browser with no window on screen), steps to each frame in turn, captures it, and hands the frames to FFmpeg (a long-standing program that converts audio and video) to be encoded; audio is mixed in the same pass. It ships twenty ready-made "skills", short instruction files that let a coding assistant drive it. What it does not do is edit existing footage. It is a renderer, not an editor, and it has no interface for cutting or arranging clips by hand.
Why it matters
Who it suits. Anyone who already writes web pages and needs short videos on a repeating schedule — product clips, release notes, data explainers — and does not want to open an editing program every time. It fits especially well where the video has to be regenerated whenever the underlying numbers change, because the whole thing is text and can be rebuilt by a script. Skip it if your video is footage of real people and places; this is for things drawn by code.
Verdict. Worth an afternoon if you already know HTML, and close to worthless if you do not — the whole saving comes from reusing knowledge you have. The honest comparison is remotion-dev/remotion, which is bigger at 63,153 stars, is built around React rather than plain HTML, and has a far more developed story for rendering in the cloud. Choose Remotion if you write React and need distributed rendering; choose this if you want plain HTML and animation libraries you already know. Two things to watch: the project is three patch versions ahead of its own published package, and it is seven months old, so expect the shape of it to keep moving.
- Plain HTML and CSS, so there is no new layout language to learn.
- One command renders; the same command runs in a container or on a cloud function.
- Preview in a real browser with live reload, so you see the composition as you write it.
- Needs Node.js 22 or newer and FFmpeg installed separately; neither is a one-click install for a non-programmer.
- The project publishes no figures at all for render speed, memory or processor use, so you cannot plan a machine from the documentation.
- Its own test files are about 240 MB and need Git LFS, so a full developer clone is heavy.
- GitHub's own pages disagree about how much is outstanding: the repository tab says 82 issues and 181 pull requests, while the issue and pull request pages themselves say 12 and 231.
remotion-dev/remotionThe same idea built on React rather than plain HTML, at 63,153 stars, with a mature cloud renderer this one does not have.
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midrender/revideoVideos described in TypeScript scene code rather than markup, at 4,097 stars, and quieter: its last code landed 15 July 2026.
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The project revideo grew out of, at 19,274 stars, aimed at explanatory animation rather than general video; its last code landed 2 July 2026.
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npx hyperframes init my-video cd my-video npx hyperframes preview npx hyperframes render
