HyperFrames Gets a Mac App for Directing AI Videos
HeyGen's HyperFrames, the free tool people use to make animated videos with Claude Code or Codex, now has a Mac app where you describe a video and direct the changes without touching code.
HyperFrames, HeyGen's free tool for making videos with AI, now has a desktop app. HyperFrames Studio, released Monday, turns a sentence or your website into an animated video: moving text, shapes, logos and screenshots, the kind you see in a product launch video or a social ad. It's for Mac and Linux, and Windows is listed as "coming soon." Its docs say, "You do not need to write code."
HeyGen released HyperFrames itself for free on April 17. It lets an AI coding tool build a video the way it would build a web page, then records that page frame by frame into a video file. Until now, you used it by typing requests to a coding agent like Codex or Claude Code, often after installing it from a terminal, the text-only window coders work in. The app is the new part.
How it works
The app runs Claude Code (Anthropic's coding tool) or Codex (ChatGPT's coding tool) on your computer, and that agent does the building. Per HyperFrames' setup guide, the loop goes like this:
- Sign in. You download the app from hyperframes.dev/studio and sign in with a HeyGen account.
- Connect an agent. The app installs Claude Code for you and asks you to sign in to Claude. If you'd rather use Codex, you install it yourself with two typed commands, the one piece of setup that isn't point and click. If both are ready, it uses Claude Code.
- Describe the video. You type what you want into the prompt box, or use the guided first project, which builds a launch video in four parts (hook, proof, turn, call to action). Give it your website and it picks up your fonts, colors and logo.
- Watch the first cut come together. The chat shows what the agent is doing while it builds, and you get an animated video on a timeline.
With Claude Code, none of it needs any code from you, though you do need a Claude or ChatGPT account behind it, and its usage counts against that plan.
Directing the edits
Under the video there are three tools for giving the agent notes:
- Select: click anything in the frame and type what should change.
- Draw: circle or mark a spot and say what to do with it. You can also draw across the timeline to say something like "tighten this part."
- Comment: pin a note to a spot in the frame at a specific moment.
Your notes stack up as pending edits, up to 10 at a time, and go to the agent together with one click. Each agent run has its own Undo button.
You can also trim the video yourself: split clips, delete them, drag them around, and change speed, volume or fades without asking the AI at all.
When it's done, you export an MP4, WebM or MOV, at 1080p unless you change it. HeyGen's launch post says it "exports in 4K," and the export guide adds that the 4K option appears "when the project fits it."
What it costs
HeyGen hasn't posted a price for the app, and HyperFrames is free and open source. Rendering on your own computer doesn't use HeyGen credits.
The agent is what costs you. HyperFrames' docs say "runs bill to the plan of the account your agent is signed in with," so every first cut and every round of notes comes out of your Claude or ChatGPT usage limits. When you hit a limit, the app tells you it's your agent's limit, and you wait for it to reset.
The question people ask most about these videos is how long one takes and how much usage it burns. HyperFrames' own team hasn't given an average, saying it depends on the agent and the size of the change.
One setting to check
In the app's settings, Claude Code's "Agent access" starts on Full access, which per the troubleshooting page means "it can install, use the internet, and run anything, with no checks." In practice, the AI can install software and change things on your computer without asking you first. The other option, Auto, keeps it working inside your project and blocks risky steps on its own. If you're new to coding agents, Auto is the safer choice.
People were already making videos this way
Since Claude Opus 5.5 came out, a lot of people have been making videos by typing into coding tools. One person had Claude make a two-minute introduction video for their elderly mom from a single prompt, for about $3 in usage. Another, on their second try with Claude Code, made a narrated explainer about a data center that makes fresh water.
I tested this too. When I gave Anthropic's Opus 5.5 and Fable 5.1 and OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra the same three builds, one of them was a 20-second launch film styled after Opus 5.5's own launch video, with every sound synthesized in code. That's the same basic idea HyperFrames is built on, minus the app.
More recently I asked Opus 5.5 to make a launch film as close as possible to its own.
Back in May I used HyperFrames as a plugin inside Codex for motion graphics, before it had an app of its own:
Until now, getting a video out of Claude Code meant describing every change in words, like "move the logo at 0:04 up and to the left." Most of us give notes on a video by pointing at it. This app lets you circle the thing you want moved and pin a comment where it goes, and the agent handles the rest.
What comes out is a first cut that still takes rounds of notes, which is how HyperFrames itself describes the app. For anyone who needs a launch video or a short social clip and has never opened editing software, that's a big step down in difficulty. I've used similar setups for a Vox-style explainer from one prompt and for 4K demo videos of every build I post.
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