Your footage already holds the story. Just say Hey Archi.

What this is

Imagine you have 40 hours of footage from a trip, a camp or a wedding. Somewhere in there is the perfect shot of a kid laughing, the moment the crowd cheered, and the one sentence that sums up the whole week. Finding those by hand takes days.

The Archive does the watching for you. Point it at a folder and it goes through every video and photo, splits the videos into short moments (a few seconds each), and writes down for each one:

• What is seen — so you can search “kids running in the rain” and get those shots, even if nobody said those words.
• What is said — every word, with the exact time it was spoken, in English, Tagalog and many other languages.
• Whether the shot is usable — shaky, blurry, too dark, a fast swing of the camera, or someone walking right in front of the lens.
• What is heard — speech, music, singing, cheering, quiet, wind.
• A short written description (optional) — a sentence about what happens, written by an AI that runs on your own computer.

Then Archi can use all of that, from inside Claude. You ask in plain English — “make a 60-second recap of camp that ends on the bonfire” — and Archi finds the moments, picks shots, shows you a plan, builds the edit in FilmCraft (a video editor), adds titles and graphics, and checks its own work.

The pieces, explained

There are a few names to learn. Here's who does what:

How a project usually flows:

Install it

Someone usually sets this up once per computer. If Hey Archi is already in your Applications folder (Mac) or Start menu (Windows), skip to Connect Archi to Claude.

On a Mac (Apple Silicon)

1. Open Terminal (press ⌘ Space, type “Terminal”, press Enter).
2. Go to the folder you downloaded it to and run the setup script:

   cd ~/repos/story-library
   ./setup-mac.sh

   It installs what's missing (Homebrew, ffmpeg, Rust, Node.js, yt-dlp, the local description AI), builds The Archive, and puts Hey Archi in your Applications folder. The first run takes a while — that's normal.
3. When it asks “Apply? [y/N]” about connecting the Craft apps, type y and press Enter if you'll use them.

On Windows 10 or 11

1. Open PowerShell (Start menu, type “PowerShell”).
2. Run the setup script:

   cd C:\repos\story-library
   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup-windows.ps1

   Add -Cuda at the end if the computer has an NVIDIA graphics card — it makes indexing much faster.
3. When it's done, Hey Archi is in your Start menu.

Connect Archi to Claude

Claude needs to be told about Archi once per computer. If someone already did this, skip to step 3.

1. Open Claude's config file. In the Claude desktop app, go to Settings › Developer › Edit Config. That opens a file called claude_desktop_config.json.
2. Add Archi inside the "mcpServers" section (create it if it isn't there), then save. Change the path to where you downloaded it.

   Mac:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "archi": {
         "command": "/Users/YOU/repos/story-library/target/release/storylib",
         "args": ["mcp", "--user", "Your Name"]
       }
     }
   }

   Windows (backslashes are doubled):

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "archi": {
         "command": "C:\\repos\\story-library\\target\\release\\storylib.exe",
         "args": ["mcp", "--user", "Your Name"]
       }
     }
   }

   --user is the name changes Claude makes are credited to — use the same name you pick in The Archive. If the file already lists other servers, add the "archi" entry next to them with a comma between.
3. Fully quit Claude and open it again. On a Mac press ⌘ Q. On Windows use File › Exit (or right-click Claude's icon by the clock › Quit) — just closing the window leaves it running.
4. Start a new chat and ask:
   Hey Archi, what's in my Archive?Copy

   Claude answers with your folders, how many hours of video you have, the dates and the languages spoken. If you haven't added a folder yet, it says the library is empty — that's fine.

5. If Claude says it doesn't have that tool, see When something's off.

Your first 20 minutes

1. Open The Archive. Click Hey Archi in Applications (Mac) or the Start menu (Windows). It opens in its own window (using Chrome or Edge, if you have one; otherwise in a browser tab).
   While The Archive runs, its icon sits in the menu bar at the top right (Mac) or by the clock (Windows; it may be under the ^ arrow). Closing the window doesn't stop The Archive, so indexing carries on. To get the window back, open The Archive again or click the icon › Open The Archive. To stop it, click the icon › Quit The Archive.
   To give it its own icon in the Dock or taskbar, use your browser's menu: Cast, save and share › Install page as app… in Chrome, or Apps › Install The Archive in Edge.
2. Say who you are. It asks Who's using The Archive? Pick your name or type it and click Add me. Everything you change is credited to this name.
3. Add a folder. Click + Add folder, then Choose…, and pick a folder of videos and photos (folders inside it are included). Click Add and index.
   Start with something small — one event, maybe 20–50 files — so you see results quickly.
4. Watch it work. The panel at the bottom of the sidebar shows progress through the four stages (and Indexing shows in the top bar wherever you are). You can keep using the app while it works. Search starts working as soon as the first stage (Pictures) reaches a file.
5. Browse. Click Browse, pick the folder in the sidebar, then click any video. You'll see it next to a timeline of everything The Archive found. Click around.
6. Search. Click Search and type something you know is in there, like “people hugging” or a phrase someone said.
7. Rate a few moments. Click Rate & tag, click a moment you love, and press 5. Click a blurry one and press X to reject it.
8. Say Hey Archi. In Claude, try:
   Hey Archi, look through the folder I just added to The Archive and tell me the story of that day — what happened, in order, with the 10 best moments.Copy

That's the whole loop. When you're ready to make something, go to Make a movie from your clips.

A tour of the app

The tabs come in two groups. Find is for your footage; Make is for what Claude makes from it.

On Search, Browse and Rate & tag, the sidebar lists your folders and tags. The folder you pick there (or All folders) applies to all three tabs. Clicking a tag filters the tab you're on; click it again to clear it.

In the top bar:

The Archive opens on the tab you used last.

Folders & indexing

Indexing means The Archive going through your files and writing down what's in them. You do it once per folder; after that, only new or changed files are processed.

Adding a folder

1. Click + Add folder.
2. Click Choose… to pick it, or paste the folder's path. Sub-folders are included.
3. If you're an admin, you'll also see Faces: Off / On — leave it off unless you need to find specific people (see Faces).
4. Click Add and index.

A folder's page

Pick a folder in the sidebar on Browse to see its files, a progress bar for each stage, and its face setting. What can Claude find here? opens a short summary.

The four stages

The sidebar shows one progress bar per folder until it's ✓ Indexed; the folder's page shows one bar per stage. Search works as soon as the first stage reaches a file; the others make results richer. A file card says what's still missing (for example Not indexed yet: speech).

If faces are on for a folder, a fifth pass finds faces too.

Reading a file

Open a file to see the video with a timeline of everything The Archive found underneath. Click anywhere on the timeline to play from that point; click a moment to see what's known about it on the right (the first moment is shown when the file opens).

• Moments — what Claude can find and look at. Each tile is one moment.
• Picture — green is good to use; yellow is so-so; red marks a problem (hover to see which).
• Sound — speechmusicsingingcheeringquietwindambience
• Speech — each bar is a line of transcript. The full transcript is below the video; click a line to jump there.

The moment panel

Click a moment to see:

• Usability — a 0–100% score for how clean the picture is.
• ▶ Cleanest part — plays the steadiest few seconds of the moment, which is what you'd use as b-roll. ▶ Play from here plays the whole moment.
• Camera style (steady, handheld, panning…), sounds, problems and anything said.
• Describe this moment — asks the local AI to describe it right now (about ten seconds).
• Stars, ✕ Reject, + Tag — the same as in Rate & tag, and the same keys work here.
• History — everything anyone has done to this moment.

Search

The Search tab runs exactly the same search Claude uses. If a moment shows up here, Claude can find it with the same words; if it doesn't, Claude won't see it either.

Search by what is seen

Describe the picture the way you'd describe it to a friend: “child laughing on a swing”, “group praying in a circle”, “wide shot of the venue in the rain”, “hands serving food”. Short and concrete works best. Picture search works best in English.

Search by what is said

Type words someone actually used: “thank you so much”, “first time”, or Tagalog like “salamat po”. Results that matched speech show the line in quotes.

Filters

Each result shows how it matched — seen, said or described — plus usability and problems. Show what Claude receives reveals the raw answer Claude gets, including each result's score. Moments anyone rejected never appear, here or to Claude. Higher-rated moments rank a little higher.

Rate & tag

This is how you tell Claude what you think of your footage. Claude always follows your judgement: it prefers what you starred, never uses what you rejected, and works from your collections when you name them.

Selecting moments

• Click a moment to select it. Shift-click selects everything between. ⌘-click (Mac) or Ctrl-click (Windows) adds one more.
• ⌘/Ctrl A selects all; Esc clears the selection. ← → move between moments.
• Double-click opens the moment in its file.
• Filters along the top narrow the grid: tag, rating, person on screen, marked by (who set the stars, reject or tags; shown when more than one person uses the library) and rejected moments. The folder comes from the sidebar.

The keys

The shortcuts button above the grid lists them all.

Tags are labels

A tag is a label on moments (funny, toasts, flowers) that you can filter and search by, and hand to Claude. Tags appear in the sidebar; click one to see its moments, or use ✎ and × beside it to rename or delete it. A moment can have any number of tags; click × on a tag to take it off.

Ratings and tags belong to you, so they're never lost — even if a folder is indexed again.

Collections

A collection is everything for one video in one place: the moments and photos, the song, the motion graphics, the brand kit for titles, and a short brief (who it's for, how long, the feel, how it ends). Then you tell Claude “make the video from the Summer Camp collection” and it builds from exactly that.

The page shows the exact words to give Claude, with a Copy button. Collections are kept by file and time like your ratings, so re-indexing never loses what's in them.

People, roles & history

Several people can share one library. Everyone who changes something is credited by name, so you can always see who did what — and put it back.

Who you are

The first time, The Archive asks Who's using The Archive? Pick your name or add yourself. Your name shows in the top bar; click it to switch. There are no passwords — it's about knowing who did what on a trusted team, not security.

Roles

Why can't everyone delete any tag? Because other people may be using it as a collection. Hover a tag in the sidebar to see who created it. The first admin is set on the computer that holds the library (see the command line); after that, admins click their name to make others admins.

History and undo

1. See who did it. Hover a moment's stars, ✕ or a tag. On a moment, History shows everything that happened to it.
2. Activity lists every change, newest first. Filter by person, kind of change, time or tag.
3. Undo one change, or Undo all shown… — for example, everything one person rejected this week. Moments someone changed since are left alone.

Finding people (faces)

The Archive can recognise people you name — so you can find every moment your director is on screen. It's off unless an admin turns it on, folder by folder, and off costs nothing.

1. Turn it on for a folder (admins): on the folder's page (Faces › Change…), or when adding a folder. ⋯ › Face recognition settings… sets the default for new folders. Choose whether to Keep faces of people you haven't named yet (so you can name them later) or Discard them (keep only faces that look like someone you named — the careful choice for footage with children). In the same Change… dialog, add a sub-folder exception to treat one sub-folder differently (e.g. Kids Camp off).
2. Add a person (admins): People › + New person, type the name, then pick a few clear faces of them and press Y.
3. Review suggestions (anyone): The Archive suggests likely faces. Select them and press Y (it's them) or N (it's not). Each answer makes the next suggestions better.
4. Use it: filter Rate & tag or Search by person, or ask Claude: “Find the best moments of Norman speaking.”

The Motion tab

Every animated title and effect Claude makes with HyperFrames is kept here. Hover a card to play it; click it to open it.

Three kinds of cards

Starter templates

The Archive comes with ten templates ready to fill in (add them with storylib motion-lib seed, which update.sh runs). Each takes your words and colours, so Claude can match them to your brand kit:

Finding a graphic

Use the search box (names, words in the graphic, or the reference it came from), the All / One-offs / Templates / From templates switch, and the kind (title card, lower third, opener, transition, overlay effect, texture), tag and portability menus.

The portability badges

Badges like EC 90% and PC 87% estimate how much of a graphic would carry over if someone rebuilt it by hand in EffectCraft (the animation) or PhotoCraft (one still frame). Hover a badge to see what wouldn't carry over exactly. It's a coverage estimate, not a promise. (Open in EffectCraft and Open in PhotoCraft are shown but not built yet.)

Sharing templates with other people

Templates can travel between computers as a single .cfmotion file (usually under 1 MB). Export… on a template saves it to your Downloads; the other person clicks Import template… in their Motion tab. See Share a template.

Step-by-step: add a motion graphic, make a reusable one, reuse one, share one.

The Brand tab

The Brand tab shows what titles look like in each brand kit — the opener, name title (lower third), quote, chapter card, location tag and end card — playing over your own footage, with the same layout, fonts, colours and timing Claude uses when it builds them in FilmCraft. Change something and the previews update instantly.

Starter kits

Five kits come with The Archive, one per kind of video, to use as they are or to start your own from (Duplicate):

Each uses fonts that come with the Mac, and a similar font that comes with Windows. Updating The Archive adds a starter you don't have yet, but never changes a kit you've edited or brings back one you deleted.

Looking at a kit

• Kits are listed on the left. ClipFinder House is the built-in style (its name for now); the one marked default is what Claude uses when you don't name a kit.
• All / Opener / Lower third / … shows every style at once or one style large. Click a preview's label to switch.
• settle, rise, wipe, pop, slide, typewriter, words — how the opener, name title and chapter card come in.
• Your footage / Bright / Busy / Dark — what the titles sit on. On Your footage each title is measured against the shot under it, exactly as when Claude adds it in FilmCraft: where the words wouldn't stand out, a soft darkening (a scrim) fades in behind them, only as strong as that shot needs. A title that is still Hard to read says so on its label (hover for the numbers). Check Bright and Busy too: if a title is hard to read there, it will be on some of your shots.
• ↻ Replay plays the animations from the start.
• The chips under the previews say which font each kind of text uses — and warn in red if it isn't installed on this computer (titles would fall back to another font).

Editing a kit

Three tabs under the previews:

• Settings — colours (with colour pickers), fonts for each kind of text, motion pace (calm, warm or lively), the name title's style (a rule beside it, a plate behind it, or clean) and side, shadow, darken behind type (auto: only where the footage needs it; always; or off) and how dark it may get, plate opacity and corner radius, and whether it's the default kit.
• frame.md — the kit itself as text. The settings block is between the --- lines; below it, plain writing about the brand's voice and do's and don'ts that Claude reads before designing anything.
• Sample words — change the example names, quotes and titles to your own, to see how long names or long quotes fit.

Click Save when you like it (Revert undoes unsaved changes; the previous version is kept as frame.md.previous). The built-in House style can't be changed — editing it and clicking Save as new kit… makes your own copy. + New kit starts a fresh kit; Duplicate copies the one you're looking at.

Face settings

⋯ › Face recognition settings… (top bar) holds the library-wide face settings: the default for new folders, whether unknown faces are kept or discarded, how many files have been searched, and Delete all face data…. Each folder's own setting and its sub-folder exceptions are on the folder's page. Only admins can change them.

What Archi can do

Through Archi, Claude has a set of tools for your Archive. You never call them yourself — you just ask, and Claude picks the right ones. Knowing what exists helps you ask for it. (The full list with names is in Every Archi tool.)

Asking well

Talk to Claude like you'd talk to a talented editor you just hired. The more it knows about why, the better its choices.

• Say who it's for and where it goes. “For our supporters, on YouTube” or “for high schoolers, as an Instagram reel” changes length, pace and shape.
• Give it a length. 20 seconds, 60 seconds, 3 minutes.
• Name the feeling. Joyful, reflective, urgent, grateful, funny.
• Ask for the plan first. “Show me the storyboard before you build.” Changing a plan takes seconds; changing an edit takes minutes.
• React to what you see. “Shorter.” “More of the kids.” “Less talking at the start.” “The second shot is too dark.” All of these work.
• Point at your collections. “Use my 4- and 5-star moments.” “Only the Opening tag.”
• When something can't be found, try it in Search first — then rephrase as what the camera sees or what someone said.
• Ask it to teach you. “Explain each choice as you go.” Every edit becomes a lesson.

What Archi won't do

Archi sets ground rules Claude follows every time:

• It won't invent footage. Every shot it uses is a real moment from your library.
• It won't use rejected moments, and it won't change your stars or rejects (it can add and remove tags when you ask).
• It won't name or identify children, or guess who anyone is.
• It won't upload your video files or send them to online services. (Claude sees the descriptions, transcripts and still frames Archi shows it.)
• It won't copy someone else's video — it copies how a video is put together, never its footage, music or words.
• It asks before opening a Craft app, and never closes your apps or takes over something you're working on.
• It doesn't export or save over your files unless you ask. Remember to save in FilmCraft (⌘/Ctrl S).

Step-by-step scenarios

Each scenario is a complete walkthrough: what you need, what to say to Claude at each step (copy the grey boxes), and what you'll see happen. Change the details to fit your footage.

1. Make a movie from your clips
2. Cut a video to a song
3. Cut an interview into a story
4. Set up your brand (once)
5. Add titles and speaker names
6. Add a motion graphic to your movie
7. Make a new reusable motion graphic
8. Reuse a saved graphic
9. Change how a template looks
10. Share a template with someone else
11. Remake a video you like
12. Build a collection and edit from it
13. Find every moment of one person
14. Fix sound, colour and mistakes
15. Make vertical reels for social
16. Build a reusable series opener in EffectCraft
17. Make a thumbnail in PhotoCraft
18. Work on one library as a team

Titles & brand kits

Claude has two ways to put words on screen, plus the Craft apps:

A brand kit is a small text file (frame.md, the same format HyperFrames uses) in the brands folder of your library. It holds colours, fonts (with fallbacks — “Avenir Next, Segoe UI” uses whichever is installed), how lively motion is, and title settings, plus a few sentences on the brand's voice and do's and don'ts. Make one with scenario 4.

The Craft apps

Claude picks the right app for each piece of work:

Work moves between them as files — for example, an EffectCraft title lands in FilmCraft as a see-through clip.

Fast or reusable?

When something could be made more than one way, Claude asks you first:

• Once? A FilmCraft title or a HyperFrames graphic — fast, and can match a reference closely.
• Again and again, only the words change? A Motion Library template.
• Again and again, and someone will tweak it by hand? An EffectCraft template — slower to build, easiest to adjust.

A good habit: prototype fast, then build the keeper.

Opening the apps for Claude

Claude can only work in an app opened for Claude (with its “control port” on). On a Mac, use the launchers in ~/Applications/Craft for Claude — drag them to your Dock — or let Claude open the app; it asks first. If you opened an app from its normal icon, Claude will ask you to save, quit and reopen it from the launcher. Claude never closes your apps, and works in its own project or document, never one you have open for something else.

Ideas to try with Archi

Copy any of these into Claude and change the details. Every one works on footage you already have.

Discover what you have

Tell a story

Share the work

Learn

Care with people

Keyboard shortcuts

Keeping your work safe

Indexing a big folder can take hours, and your ratings and tags can't be re-created by a computer. The Archive protects both:

• It stops rather than starting over. If an update would redo work already done — many files that look changed, a folder that moved, a drive that came back under another name — indexing stops with STOPPED to protect your index, and nothing is changed. Usually the fix is to point it at the original folder or plug the drive back in.
• Backups. The catalog is copied to the backups folder before every update, upgrade, re-index and folder removal; the newest 8 are kept.
• Ratings and tags follow your moments, even when a file is analysed again.
• A dry run: storylib check <folder> says what the next indexing would do, without doing it.
• Restoring a backup: quit The Archive and Claude, copy the backup over catalog.db in your library folder, and delete catalog.db-wal and catalog.db-shm. Ask whoever set up The Archive if you're unsure.

Keeping it up to date

When there's a new version, run the update script in the folder you downloaded it to, then fully quit and reopen Claude:

# Mac (Terminal)
./update.sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\update.ps1

It backs up your catalog, rebuilds, refreshes the HyperFrames knowledge, updates yt-dlp, and checks the Claude connection. It won't run while indexing is in progress.

HyperFrames knowledge is a copy of HeyGen's open-source editing playbooks (story, pacing, sound mixing, captions, motion design). Claude checks it at the start of each editing session and refreshes it when it's a week old, so it learns new techniques without anyone changing code.

Where everything is stored

Your library folder is ~/StoryLibrary on a Mac and %USERPROFILE%\StoryLibrary on Windows. Your footage stays wherever it already was — the library only holds what The Archive learned about it.

The command line

You can do almost everything from the app and Claude. These are for setup, troubleshooting and power users. On a Mac, run them in Terminal from the folder you downloaded it to as ./target/release/storylib …; on Windows, .\target\release\storylib.exe … in PowerShell.

Add --help to any command for all its options.

Every Archi tool

You never need these names — but if you're curious what Claude is doing when it says “calling search…”, here's the full list, grouped.

FilmCraft and PhotoCraft also have their own connectors (filmcraft, photocraft) that Claude uses to drive those apps directly.

When something's off

Words used here

Moment

A short slice of one shot (up to about 6 seconds) with one picture. The unit you and Claude search, view and choose.

Index / indexing

The Archive going through your files and writing down what's in them.

Catalog

The file (catalog.db) where everything The Archive knows is kept.

Usability

0–100%: how clean the picture is — steady, sharp, well exposed, nobody passing the lens.

Cleanest part

The steadiest few seconds inside a moment. Ideal for b-roll.

B-roll

Shots that play over someone speaking, to show what they're talking about.

Storyboard

The plan for a video: each beat, the shot, the sound, and why — before anything is cut.

Beat

One step of the story (“arrival”, “the big game”, “goodbyes”). Also: a pulse in the music.

Hook

The first few seconds — what makes people keep watching.

Sequence / timeline

The edit in FilmCraft: clips laid out in order on tracks.

Whip pan

A fast swing of the camera; blurry in the middle.

Lens-pass

Someone walking right in front of the camera.

Lower third

A name title in the lower part of the screen.

LUFS

The standard unit for how loud a video sounds overall. Platforms like YouTube expect a certain level.

Clipping

Sound so loud it distorts.

Description

A sentence from the local AI about what happens. Helpful, not always right.

Tag

A label you put on moments, to filter and search by.

Collection

Everything for one video: moments and photos, a song, motion graphics, a brand kit and a brief. Tell Claude to make the video from it.

Rejected

A moment marked X: it stays in The Archive but Claude never uses it.

Activity

The list of every change — who, when — with Undo.

Admin / editor

Admins can manage anyone's tags, faces and roles. Everyone else is an editor.

Faceprint

128 numbers describing a face, used to tell whether two faces are the same person. Kept only on this computer.

Brand kit

An organisation's colours, fonts and title style, saved once and used for every title.

Motion graphic

An animated title or effect rendered as a video clip to lay over footage.

One-off

A motion graphic made once, for one video.

Template

A reusable motion graphic with fields (words, colours, timing) you fill in to render a new version.

.cfmotion

One file holding a Motion Library template, for sharing it with someone on another computer.

Field

One changeable blank in a template, like the headline or the accent colour.

Render

Turning a graphic or edit into a finished video file.

Transparent / alpha

A video with see-through parts, so it can sit on top of other footage.

ProRes 4444

A high-quality video format that can carry transparency. Motion graphics are rendered in it.

Portability

How much of a motion graphic would carry over if rebuilt by hand in EffectCraft or PhotoCraft.

HyperFrames

An open-source tool that turns animated web pages into video, plus a set of editing playbooks Claude follows.

Reference

Someone else's video that Claude studies to learn from or remake.

Recipe

The structure of a video — beats, lengths, pacing, music feel — that can be reused.

Control port

How Claude talks to a Craft app. Apps opened from the for Claude launchers have it on.

Connector / MCP

How Claude plugs into other software. Archi is a connector.

Archi

The AI in The Archive, the connector named archi, that lets Claude use your Archive. Formerly ClipMaestro.

Server

The one computer that runs The Archive for everyone on a shared library.

The story behind Hey Archi · Support Hey Archi

The Archive runs only on this computer. Your video files are never uploaded. Hey Archi was formerly ClipFinder and ClipMaestro.