VidCraft Installation

Install VidCraft: add the plugin, run /vidcraft:setup, optional tools (Whisper, ffmpeg), updating and uninstalling on Linux, macOS and Windows.

VidCraft Installation

Deutsche Version

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Requirements

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`.

Step 1: Add the plugin

As given in the project README:

claude plugin add vidcraft

Step 2: Run setup

In Claude Code:

/vidcraft:setup

The setup skill does the following, in order:

It looks for a working Python interpreter (python3, python, then py -3 on Windows).
It creates the directory ~/.vidcraft/.
It creates the virtual environment ~/.vidcraft/venv/ if it is missing.
It installs the runtime dependencies from requirements.txt. This happens on every run so that new dependencies are never missed after an update.
It copies config/config.example.yaml to ~/.vidcraft/config.yaml if that file does not exist yet. An existing configuration is never overwritten.
It creates ~/.vidcraft/cache/.
It checks that the MCP server can be imported.
It starts /vidcraft:configure for your personal settings.

Installed Python packages: mcp[cli], pyyaml, pypdf, pdfplumber and python-docx.

Step 3: Configure and verify

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:setup again fixes this.

Optional: subtitles with Whisper

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.

Windows

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.

Updating

After a plugin update, run /vidcraft:setup again. It syncs the dependencies in the existing environment and leaves your config.yaml untouched.

Uninstalling

Remove the plugin through Claude Code's plugin management.
Optionally delete the directory ~/.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.