OpenShorts.app

Open source AI video platform with 3 tools in one: Clip Generator, AI Shorts (UGC videos with AI actors), and YouTube Studio.

Two people on camera? OpenShorts stacks them instead of shrinking the wide shot, puts the captions on the seam where they cover nobody, and switches back to a face-tracked crop when the cut goes to one person. The AI picks the layout per video; nothing to configure.

Two ways to run it, same software either way:

Self-hosting is genuinely free and always will be. It costs you a machine, your own API keys and the time to keep it running. The hosted plans exist to cover that hardware and those keys, not to unlock features.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b45fa983-16b4-48b5-ac5b-a267836b9ad9

Video Tutorial: How it works

*Click the image above to watch the full walkthrough.*

3 Tools in 1 Platform

1. Clip Generator

Turn your long-form videos — podcasts, webinars, livestreams, vlogs, interviews — into viral-ready 9:16 shorts for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.

2. AI Shorts (UGC Video Creator)

Generate marketing videos with AI actors for any product or business. No camera, no studio, no influencer budget. Just describe your product or paste a URL.

• Two cost modes: Low Cost (~$0.65/video) and Premium (~$2/video)
• Works for any business: SaaS, restaurants, e-commerce, coaching, local businesses
• AI-generated actors with lip-sync, voiceover, b-roll, and TikTok-style subtitles
• Choose from a shared avatar gallery or upload your own photo
• Publish directly to TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube

3. YouTube Studio

Complete free AI YouTube toolkit: thumbnails, titles, descriptions, and direct publishing.

• AI thumbnail generator with face overlay
• 10 viral title suggestions with refinement chat
• Auto-generated descriptions with chapter timestamps
• One-click publish to YouTube

UGC Video Gallery

All generated videos and avatars are saved to a public gallery with SEO pages for each video.

• Public gallery page with hover-to-play (`/gallery`)
• Individual SEO video pages with og:video meta tags (`/video/{id}`)
• JSON-LD structured data for search engines
• Avatar gallery with prompt history

Key Features

Clip Generator

• Viral Moment Detection: Google Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite analyzes transcripts and scene boundaries to detect 3-15 high-potential moments
• Runs fully local if you want: point `LLM_BASE_URL` at Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM or any OpenAI-compatible server and the moment picker runs on your own model, no Google key needed (see Run without a Google key)
• Smart 9:16 Cropping: AI reframing per scene — TRACK mode (MediaPipe + YOLOv8 face tracking), GENERAL mode (blurred background), SPLIT mode (two speakers stacked, captions on the seam) and SCREENCAST mode (screen over presenter); the layout is picked per video by Gemini or forced from the dashboard
• Auto Subtitles: faster-whisper with word-level timestamps, styled and burned into clips
• AI Voice Dubbing: ElevenLabs integration for 30+ languages with voice cloning
• Hook Text Overlays: AI-generated attention-grabbing text overlays
• AI Video Effects: Gemini-generated FFmpeg filters for professional effects

AI Shorts Pipeline

1. Analyze: Scrape website URL + web research, or generate from manual description

2. Script: AI writes viral scripts (hook - problem - solution - CTA format)

3. Actor: Generate AI actors with Flux 2 Pro or select from shared gallery

4. Voice: ElevenLabs TTS voiceover (English/Spanish, male/female)

5. Video: Talking head generation (Hailuo 2.3 Fast img2video + VEED Lipsync)

6. B-roll: AI-generated visuals with Ken Burns effect

7. Composite: FFmpeg final assembly with subtitles and hook overlays

8. Publish: Direct posting to TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts via Upload-Post

YouTube Studio

• AI-powered title generation with 10 viral options
• Interactive refinement chat for titles
• AI thumbnail generation with custom face + background
• Auto descriptions with chapter timestamps from Whisper transcript
• Direct YouTube publishing via Upload-Post

Social Auto-Publishing

• One-click posting to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts simultaneously
• Schedule uploads for any date and time — plan your content calendar and let OpenShorts publish automatically
• Multi-platform distribution — publish to all your social networks at once from a single interface
• Upload-Post integration with async uploads

Infrastructure

• S3 cloud backup (private bucket for clips, public bucket for gallery/avatars)
• SEO gallery pages served by FastAPI with JSON-LD structured data
• Shared avatar gallery across all users
• Async job queue with configurable concurrency

Who Is This For?

• Content creators — Turn long videos into shorts automatically, publish to all platforms at once
• Marketing agencies — Generate UGC videos for clients at scale, no actors or studios needed
• SaaS founders — Create product demos and marketing shorts from just a URL
• E-commerce brands — Product videos with AI actors for TikTok Shop, Instagram, YouTube
• Local businesses — Restaurants, gyms, real estate, coaching — affordable video marketing
• Developers — Self-host, customize the pipeline, integrate via API

AI Shorts Showcase

Videos generated with OpenShorts AI Shorts — no camera, no studio, no actors:

> Browse all videos at openshorts.app/gallery

OpenShorts vs Competitors

How Much Does It Cost?

Self-hosting OpenShorts is free. You provide the machine and you only pay for the AI APIs you use, and most have generous free tiers:

CLI

The same API from the terminal, zero dependencies (`cli/`):

pip install openshorts   # or: uvx openshorts

export OPENSHORTS_API_KEY=osk_...              # hosted
# export OPENSHORTS_API_URL=http://localhost:8000   # self-hosted, no key

openshorts process "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." --wait
openshorts clips 
openshorts publish  0 --platforms tiktok,youtube

Agent skill

`skills/openshorts/SKILL.md` follows the open

Agent Skills standard, so it works in any

skill-capable agent:

# Claude Code (and most agents): copy the folder into the skills directory
cp -r skills/openshorts ~/.claude/skills/

# Hermes Agent: install straight from this repo
hermes skills install mutonby/openshorts/skills/openshorts

# OpenClaw: from ClawHub
openclaw skills install @mutonby/openshorts

n8n

An importable workflow (video URL in, published-ready clips out, no polling)

lives in `examples/n8n/`.

Tech Stack

Environment Variables

Server-side (.env):

Client-side (encrypted in localStorage):

Security & Performance

• Non-Root Execution: Containers run as dedicated `appuser`
• Concurrency Control: Semaphore-based job queue (`MAX_CONCURRENT_JOBS`)
• Auto-Cleanup: Automatic purging of old jobs (1h retention)
• Encrypted Keys: API keys encrypted client-side, never stored server-side
• Upload Validation: Image uploads validated for format and minimum size
• File Limits: 2GB upload limit protection

Social Media Setup (Upload-Post)

1. Register: app.upload-post.com/login

2. Create Profile: Go to Manage Users

3. Connect Accounts: Link TikTok, Instagram, and/or YouTube

4. Get API Key: Navigate to API Keys

5. Use in OpenShorts: Paste the key in Settings

Star History

Contributions

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's adding new AI models, improving the lip-sync pipeline, or building new features — feel free to open a PR.

License

MIT License for the core application — OpenShorts is yours to use, modify, and scale.

Exception: the `cloud/` directory (billing, managed keys, and the hosted-service infrastructure behind the optional `BILLING_ENABLED` flag) is source-available under the OpenShorts Commercial License. You can read it, modify it, and self-host it for personal or internal use, but you can't offer it to third parties as a paid/hosted service. Self-hosting the core app never requires this directory.