| Requirement | Note |
|---|---|
| Claude Code | The plugin runs inside Claude Code. |
| Python 3.10 or newer | Needed for the MCP server and document analysis. |
| HeyGen or Synthesia account | Only for generating the videos manually. |
| OpenAI Whisper and ffmpeg | Optional, only for /vidcraft:subtitle-generator. |
As given in the project README:
claude plugin add vidcraft
In Claude Code:
/vidcraft:setup
The setup skill does the following, in order:
python3, python, then py -3 on Windows).~/.vidcraft/.~/.vidcraft/venv/ if it is missing.requirements.txt. This happens on every run so that new dependencies are never missed after an update.config/config.example.yaml to ~/.vidcraft/config.yaml if that file does not exist yet. An existing configuration is never overwritten.~/.vidcraft/cache/./vidcraft:configure for your personal settings.Installed Python packages: mcp[cli], pyyaml, pypdf, pdfplumber and python-docx.
Use /vidcraft:configure to set the content root, platform and brand, see Configuration.
Use /vidcraft:session-start to check that the MCP server is running, the configuration fits and projects are found.
Claude Code starts the MCP server through
bin/run-server, which uses only the Python in~/.vidcraft/venv/. Without that environment the server does not start. Running/vidcraft:setupagain fixes this.
The skill /vidcraft:subtitle-generator calls the command-line program whisper locally. You need:
pipx install openai-whisper
Alternatively pip install openai-whisper. ffmpeg must be installed as well, for example on Debian/Ubuntu with sudo apt install ffmpeg.
The repo ships its own launch wrapper, bin/run-server.cmd, which uses %USERPROFILE%\.vidcraft\venv\Scripts\python.exe. The setup skill detects Windows and tries py -3 when python is only the Microsoft Store placeholder.
After a plugin update, run /vidcraft:setup again. It syncs the dependencies in the existing environment and leaves your config.yaml untouched.
~/.vidcraft/. It holds the virtual environment, the configuration and the cache (cache/state.json).Your project files under the configured content_root are not touched by either step.