broll.

your coding agent can render video now.

broll is an mcp server that turns claude code (or any agent) into a content studio. your api keys — no credit meters. deterministic ffmpeg — the model plans, code renders. draft-first — nothing posts without your tap.

$ claude mcp add broll -- npx -y broll-mcp

TRANSCRIPT · CLAUDE CODE ⇄ BROLL

you

make a launch teaser. 9:16, captions, our colors.

agent

render_video { clips: 6, captions: 3, aspect: "9:16" }

broll

✓ rnd_d41877140c.mp4 11.8s · 1080×1920 · h264

agent

extract_frame { atSec: 2.5 }it looks at its own render before showing you

broll

✓ ast_08cbfa7683.png

agent

create_post_draft { media: 1, platforms: ["bluesky"] }

broll

✓ dr_mrflt404_n8u1z violations: none · waiting for a human

you

ship it

broll

✓ published → bsky.app/profile/brollapp…

REC

the actual output of the transcript — six scenes, burned-in captions, an end card. no human touched ffmpeg.

build log

it built itself. these are the receipts.

jul 10a6ec740

v0.1.0 in one session. render engine, carousel compositor, bluesky + x adapters, 74 tests. its first published post was its own announcement.

jul 10c1428c9

renamed to broll. the human vetoed "backlot". credentials moved into ~/.broll/.env the same night.

jul 11c89b7eb

designed its own logo. five concepts, human picked one, agent redrew the winner as vector code and set its own avatar over the AT protocol.

jul 11e86cf3f

threads. reply-chained on bluesky and x, with honest partial-failure reporting ("broke at post 3/5, 2 published").

jul 11f1def8b

x taught us about 402s. their api now charges per write. the wall became an error message that explains itself, and an export-bundle fallback.

jul 124c200ae

mastodon (no app review, bless the fediverse), this page, and open source. 96 tests.

a scheduled loop now drafts a post from each day's commits and waits for one human tap. following @brollapp.bsky.social is watching the demo run.

what it does

fifteen tools. four verbs.

generate_image / _video
your OPENAI_API_KEY or GEMINI_API_KEY, sent only to its own vendor. a keyless mock keeps every workflow runnable before you add keys.
render_video
the agent writes a declarative json plan — clips, trims, burned-in captions, music bed, aspect — and broll compiles it to one exact ffmpeg invocation. same plan in, same pixels out.
render_carousel
branded slide sets where layout, type scale, accent bar, page numbers are code. slide 40 matches slide 1, forever.
extract_frame
pulls a png so the agent can look at its own render before showing you. agents that check their work post less garbage.
create_post_draft / _thread_draft
posts become reviewable json files, validated against each platform's real rules — bluesky's 300 graphemes and 1MB blobs, x's urls-count-as-23 — before anything leaves the machine.
publish_post
hard-requires confirm:true. publishes to a subset if you want, reports per-platform results, refuses to double-post on retry.

platforms

honest about the walls.

where	status	the truth
bluesky	live	app password, five-minute setup. threads, images, link facets. the good one.
mastodon	live	any instance, zero app review. threads, images, video.
x	pay-per-use	x charges api credits for every write (2026 pricing). broll posts if you fund it; otherwise it exports a ready-to-post bundle and you tap post in the app.
export bundle	always	text + numbered media in a folder, ready for any composer. the zero-dependency fallback.
instagram · linkedin · youtube	roadmap	app-review queues. applications in progress; no promises about meta's timelines.

broll cloud · waitlist open

the parts your laptop can't do.

walled platforms
instagram, linkedin, tiktok, x — connected through broll's approved app credentials. you never file an app review or fund x api credits.
always-on schedules
daily build-log loops and queued posts that run while your machine sleeps.
approvals on your phone
the agent drafts, you get a push, you swipe. the confirm gate, as a ux instead of a json file.

local broll stays mit and free, forever. cloud lands at ~$29/mo when the waitlist says so — join by 👍-ing issue #1. comments set the platform build order.

safety model

rules the code can't break.

draft-first, always. nothing is published that isn't first a reviewable file on disk.
hard confirm gate. publish_post requires confirm:true — agents are instructed to get your explicit go-ahead, every time.
no silent truncation. constraint violations block publishing with instructions. your text is never auto-trimmed.
no double-posting. retrying a partly-published draft refuses the platforms that already succeeded.
your keys stay yours. read from env or ~/.broll/.env, never logged, never proxied, no markup.

these are numbered non-negotiables in the repo's CLAUDE.md — the file the agent itself is bound by when it works on this codebase.