Production skill suite
Drama Skills
Turn an idea or a novel into episode scripts, then visual specs, storyboards and generation prompts; produce and review when you need to.
2,383 GitHub stars11 skills
Source on GitHubEnglish README
Install Drama Skills
npx skills add zenstory-ai/drama-skills -y -gWhat it is
Drama Skills is an eleven-skill workflow for AI short-drama and motion-comic creation in agent hosts such as Claude Code and Codex. Start at the stage your material needs: development, writing, assets, storyboards, prompts, production, editing or review. Create the five core creative Markdown document types as needed, with cut lists and review reports for their respective stages. Media generation runs after you review the prompts and confirm the spend with your configured provider.
What you need
- LicenseMIT, open source.
- HostAny one of these agents:Claude CodeCodex CLIGoogle AntigravityOpenCodeZCodeOpenClawReasonixKimi CodeDeepSeek Harness
Start in 3 steps
- Install
npx skills add zenstory-ai/drama-skills -y -g - Entry commandRun
$short-dramain your agent host. - Follow a guideFind your first task under “How it works” below and open its guide.
Writing craft
111 craft articles, each built on a method file in this project's skills. Start with the complete workflow, or open a task.
Complete workflow
Make your first short-drama episode
- Novel to short drama: episodes, scripts and storyboards
short-drama-develop - How to Write a Short-Drama Episode Outline: Map and Example
short-drama-develop - How to write a storyboard script: shot list template for short drama
short-drama-storyboard - AI short drama character consistency across shots
short-drama-assets
By creative task
How it works
- Does one novel chapter become one short-drama episode? Not by default. Plan around an episode-level payoff and a clear lead-in to the next episode, preserving source facts and marking proposed changes. When combining episodes, retain what changes the character’s judgment and the visible consequence of the choice, not every recap or break. The novel-to-short-drama guide compares one-episode and three-episode cuts of an original repair-shop story, alongside its prose-to-scene-and-shots example.
- Develop Create an episode map or genre guidance when needed; a candidate director brief becomes authority only after creator acceptance.
- How can I improve dialogue without changing the story? Give each speaker something to seek, and decide who can hear a private thought before turning it into dialogue. The repair-shop adaptation examples compare audience-only inner VO with an objection the courier hears, then revise the mother’s response without inventing funds or taking over the daughter’s decision. A character’s belief is not proof of another person’s intent; direct answers need not become riddles.
- Can I storyboard an already accepted screenplay directly? Yes: start from the current screenplay and necessary visual facts, without restarting development or waiting for image prompts. The script-to-storyboard guide follows an original scene through four shot designs, preserving dialogue, action continuity and the ending. It explains what to change when complete speech and sequential actions do not fit the planned duration; its timings are text estimates, not measured footage. A same-script four-shot versus continuous two-shot study also shows how framing changes attention, without treating more cuts or a long take as automatically better.
- Can I save a reveal for the ending just by hiding it in the picture? Not if the dialogue already gives it away. The screenplay-to-storyboard example tracks what the audience first hears or sees, then compares keeping the accepted scene with an explicitly proposed ending-reveal rewrite. Moving the line changes the cause of a response and the ending; it is not a silent camera adjustment. Any chosen subtitles or start frames must follow that same information order.
- How do I keep the same character across shots? Separate persistent identity from the scene’s compatible Look and each shot’s changing hand, prop and gaze state. Carry only the necessary unchanged visual facts as continuity locks. The three-shot character example shows how the shots connect without pretending a character sheet guarantees generated faces.
- Are prompt IDs already image references? No.
IMG-*identifies prompt text;REF-*binds an inspected real project file. An externalPLAN-*points to a current IMG or SHOT entry, not a made-up image path, and can support requested video-prompt writing before the creator attaches pictures in their own canvas. It cannot supply files toshort-drama-produce. The reference-selection exercise separates visible identity, compatible clothing, geography and boundary frames without requiring every supplied picture to be regenerated. - Produce, edit, review Media generation uses prepare → explicit confirmation → run. Editing and a separately requested review are distinct stages.
What makes it different
- An episode can use up to five core creative document types: screenplay, visual bible, storyboard, image prompts and video prompts, created only when needed.
- Rule categories distinguish locally provable structural failures from reviewed judgments, craft defaults and taste choices.
- Production uses a fingerprint-bound, one-time confirmation; writing prompts alone does not authorize a paid run.
- Only image files that were actually generated or supplied, and are bound to the project, become production references.
Who it is for
- Screenwriters
- Motion-comic and short-drama studios
- Directors and producers working with image/video generation models
Terms it uses
Sources
Based on the source as of 2026-10-15; links point at that version.
- Episode cuts follow dramatic results, not chapter counts
- Creator-first entry and on-demand documents
- Optional look development, production and review boundaries
- Director-brief acceptance and optional artifacts
- Real image references and explicit spend confirmation
- Character anchors and compatible Look definitions
- Where continuity-lock text must be carried
- Real REF images, planned inputs and non-production states
- Star counts are a 2026-09-29 snapshot; the workflow notes below reflect this source review. 2026-10-15: core creator documents and the additional cut list