ReelForge

A desktop app that turns one comedic prompt into a 9:16 reel ready to publish on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Built for instxnt.xyz.

The pipeline:

your B-roll  ─┐
              ├──▶  Claude writes script ──▶ ffmpeg burns text + music ──▶ you approve ──▶ IG + FB + TikTok
brand voice  ─┘

Credits

Originally built by Abhishek Khedekar (@abhiquack, abhishekkhedekar.com) — credit for the Electron + Claude + ffmpeg + Meta/TikTok-OAuth scaffolding goes to him. This fork extends it for instxnt.xyz; see the Roadmap for what I'm trying to layer on top.

First-run setup (do these once)

1. Install and run

cd ~/GitHub/reelforge
npm install
npm run dev

Native modules (node-pty, keytar) compile against Electron's Node. If you hit a rebuild error, run npm run postinstall then npm run dev again.

2. Anthropic API key

console.anthropic.com → Settings → API Keys. Paste into Settings → Claude API.

3. Switch your Instagram to Creator or Business

Your IG handle must be a Creator or Business account. Personal accounts cannot use the Graph API.

Instagram app → Settings → Account → Switch to Creator account (free, takes 10 seconds, no follower loss). Then link it to a Facebook Page — you can create a placeholder page if you don't already have one.

4. Create a Meta developer app

developers.facebook.com/apps → Create App → Business → Continue. Add these products:

• Instagram Graph API
• Facebook Login

In Facebook Login → Settings, add valid OAuth redirect URI:

http://localhost:53682/oauth/meta/callback

Copy the App ID and App Secret into Settings → Meta in ReelForge. Click Connect Meta — your browser will pop up a Facebook auth dialog, you approve, and ReelForge auto-discovers your linked IG account and Page.

5. Create a TikTok developer app

developers.tiktok.com/apps → Manage apps → Connect an app. Add the Content Posting API product. Add redirect URI:

http://localhost:53683/oauth/tiktok/callback

Copy the Client Key and Client Secret into Settings → TikTok. Click Connect TikTok.

Direct post vs Inbox. TikTok requires app review approval to post directly to a user's profile. Until you're approved, leave the "direct" toggle off on the Publish tab — your video uploads to your TikTok Drafts inbox and you tap publish in the TikTok app. Apply for review in parallel; this takes 2–6 weeks.

Daily flow

1. Library — Shoot 10–30 short B-roll clips on your phone (you typing, walking to desk, coffee, monitor close-ups, server racks, your dog, whatever). Drop them in once. Also drop in a few royalty-free tracks from mixkit.co or pixabay.com/music.

2. Compose — Either:

   • Quick generate: type a brief ("shopify pricing is insane, 4 lines"), hit Generate, get a JSON script.
   • Claude Code terminal: open the embedded terminal, ask Claude anything ("write a reel script about the time my client got a $30k shopify bill"), paste the JSON it spits out into the script field.

   Pick 1–3 clips, pick a track, hit Render.

3. Review — Watch. If it's funny, Send to Publish. If not, jump back to Compose and regenerate.

4. Publish — Confirm caption, check the boxes for IG/FB/TikTok, hit publish. Done.

Where things live

• App data: ~/Library/Application Support/reelforge/data/
  • clips/ — your B-roll
  • music/ — your tracks
  • reels/ — rendered output, ready to publish
• Secrets: macOS Keychain (xyz.instxnt.reelforge)

Cost estimate

• Anthropic API: ~$0.05–0.30 per reel (Sonnet, with brand voice cached)
• Hosting: $0 (runs on your Mac)
• Music/footage: $0 (royalty-free libs)
• IG/FB/TikTok APIs: $0

~$30/month for 3 reels/day across 3 platforms. Mostly Claude.

Known limits

• TikTok direct post requires app review. Inbox mode works today with sandbox credentials.
• Meta token expires every ~60 days. Reconnect from Settings when it does.
• Rate limits. IG: 100 API posts / 24h. Plenty.
• No scheduling yet. Render and publish immediately. Add a cron wrapper later.

Roadmap

A few things I want to add. None of these are built yet — listing them here so future-me doesn't forget.

• Larp B-Roll engine. Right now you have to film your own b-roll. The plan: each script beat gets a per-line brollPrompt from Claude, sent to Kling 3.0 (~$0.50/clip) for staged founder-life shots (hands typing, packing tape, monitor close-ups, Stripe notifications popping). Falls back to a curated Pixabay/Mixkit library when the prompt matches a cached shot. Adds maybe $2–3/reel in video gen cost.
• Long-form → clips. Point at a YouTube URL or podcast file, run local Whisper for word-timestamps, have Claude pick 5–10 moment windows with hook + payoff, render each as a 9:16 with auto-captions burned in. This is the half of "auto clipper" that the current app doesn't do.
• Multi-account fanout. Token store keyed by IG handle instead of one creds blob. One render → N accounts (founder, brand, niche meme handles) with per-account caption variants from Claude.
• Scheduling. Render queue + post queue + a launchd plist so the Mac mini posts on a schedule even when I'm asleep. Currently render-and-publish-immediately, which is annoying.
• Brand voice memory. Replace the static defaultBrandVoice() block in electron/lib/store.ts with an append-only voice.jsonl of approved scripts. Few-shot from the corpus on every call, prompt-cache the lot. Should improve with use.
• Telemetry. Nightly cron pulls IG Graph API insights per posted reel, writes to metrics.sqlite. Eventually a "what's working" tab grouped by hook pattern + audio + time-of-day.

If you want to take a swing at any of these, PRs welcome.

Architecture quick map

• electron/main.ts — bootstraps the BrowserWindow, registers IPC handlers, exposes a reelforge:// protocol so the renderer can play local files
• electron/ipc/pty.ts — spawns claude in a pseudo-terminal via node-pty; falls back to plain child_process if the native module fails
• electron/ipc/compose.ts — ffmpeg pipeline: normalize each clip to 1080×1920, concat, burn text overlays via drawtext, mux music
• electron/ipc/oauth-meta.ts / oauth-tiktok.ts — spins up a localhost HTTP server, opens the OAuth URL in the user's browser, exchanges the code for tokens, stores in Keychain
• electron/ipc/publish-*.ts — chunked uploads to IG Reels / FB Reels / TikTok
• src/components/* — React UI for each tab