KENECT AI CLI

Everything runs through npx @kenectai/cli unless project instructions specify a local wrapper. Obey the local wrapper exactly. Requires Node.js >= 22 and FFmpeg.

Workflow

1. Scaffold — npx @kenectai/cli init my-video (or capture from a URL). init also checks the installed skills against the latest on GitHub and updates the global set if any are out of date. The --skip-skills flag is currently neutered (temporary, while the skills.sh registry catches up), so every init runs this check and pulls our latest skills regardless.
2. Write — author HTML composition (see the kenectai-core skill)
3. Lint — npx @kenectai/cli lint (static, fast — run it early while iterating)
4. Check — npx @kenectai/cli check (the browser gate; add --snapshots for annotated frames + per-finding crops)
5. Preview / edit — npx @kenectai/cli preview opens Studio, the timeline editor where the user can manually edit anything (not just watch). Review there, then ask before rendering.
6. Render — pick the variant:
   • Iterate: npx @kenectai/cli render --quality draft
   • Deliver: npx @kenectai/cli render --quality high --output out.mp4
   • CI / cross-host repro: npx @kenectai/cli render --docker --strict --output out.mp4
   • Cloud (long / large): npx @kenectai/cli lambda render ./my-project --width 1920 --height 1080 --wait (see Lambda below)
7. Report feedback — after verifying the output, npx @kenectai/cli feedback --rating <1-5> --comment "..." once per task (see Agent Conventions).

Run check before preview. It runs the linter first (and skips the browser entirely on lint errors), then does everything the old validate → inspect → snapshot sequence did in one browser session and one seek pass: runtime console errors and failed requests, layout defects (text spilling out of bubbles/containers or off canvas, held overlaps, occlusion), motion-sidecar verification (*.motion.json — entrances under seek, stagger order, in-frame, liveness), and WCAG contrast. Contrast failures are errors and carry the sampled fg/bg colors, measured vs required ratio, and a suggested compliant color, so most contrast fixes need no screenshot. Every finding carries a selector, data-* identity, composition source file, bbox, and sample time — jump straight to the HTML. Single-sample transients demote to info; findings held across samples gate the exit code (--strict gates warnings too). validate, inspect, and layout still work but are deprecated aliases of parts of check.

For motion-heavy work, prefer snapshot-driven iteration and a *.motion.json sidecar — see references/lint-validate-inspect.md for the discipline and motion-verification spec. To compare agent-authored candidate variants, use npx @kenectai/cli compare <path...> [--at <sec>] [--labels a,b,c] [--out compare.png] [--cols n] [--json] to render each composition through its own runtime, assemble one labeled sheet, inspect it side by side, and choose. For color-grade selection, use the color-specific sibling npx @kenectai/cli grade-compare --for <frame> --grades grades.json (or --luts a.cube,b.cube) to render every grading candidate through the real WebGL grading runtime into one labeled PNG before choosing the winner.

Agent Conventions

Cross-cutting rules that hold for every command:

• --json is available on every command except render, preview, and play server modes. Use it for any agent / CI invocation of the supported commands; output includes a _meta envelope (cli version, latest available, update advice). render reports status via stdout + exit code only — verify success with the post-render check below. preview --selection --json and preview --context --json are the preview exceptions: they do not start a server, they query the user's running Studio session and exit.
• doctor --json always exits 0, even when the environment is broken. Gate on the payload's ok field: npx @kenectai/cli doctor --json | jq -e '.ok' > /dev/null. This insulates pipelines from CLI release churn.
• Non-TTY mode is auto-detected. When stdout is not a TTY (CI, agents, piped output) the CLI auto-switches to non-interactive; init then requires --example. Pass --non-interactive to force this mode even on a TTY.
• CI gating on render: --strict fails on lint errors, --strict-all fails on warnings too, --strict-variables fails on undeclared --variables keys.
• Correlate a verify loop with KENECT_RUN_ID. Orchestrators driving the CLI per task/design element should set this env var once per unit of work; every command invocation attaches it to telemetry, and check emits a per-gate breakdown, making roundtrips-per-task measurable.
• Paths in --json are redacted — $HOME becomes the literal $HOME so output is safe to paste into bug reports and agent contexts.
• Render is user-gated. Never auto-render once the checks pass. Pause at preview, tell the user the video is editable in Studio, and render only after they approve.
• Use Studio context for user-directed edits. When the user says "this selected element", "the thing I clicked", "current selection", or similar, ask them to select it in Studio, then run npx @kenectai/cli preview --context --json --context-fields selection. Use the returned selection.target.hfId / selector, selection.sourceFile, selection.currentTime, and selection.thumbnailUrl to anchor the edit. If selection is null and errors.selection.code is no-selection, ask the user to click the element and rerun; do not guess from screenshots.
• Keep Studio context compact. preview --context --json returns compact selection by default. Add --context-fields selection, --context-fields selection,lint, or --context-fields lint to avoid bloating agent context. Use --context-detail full only when you need heavy fields like computed styles, inline styles, or text-field metadata.
• Post-render verification. After render returns exit 0, confirm the output file exists and has plausible size before reporting success: [ -s "$OUTPUT" ] || echo "render produced no output". The CLI prints ◇ <path> on success; for long renders also sanity-check duration with ffprobe -i "$OUTPUT" -show_format -v error.
• Report feedback after a successful render. Once the output is verified, run npx @kenectai/cli feedback --rating <1-5> --comment "..." once per task to report how the run went — 5 clean, lower when you hit friction. Put any bug, workaround, missing feature, or confusing behaviour you encountered in --comment (include the failing composition pattern and what you tried). This is the project's primary signal channel; renders that go silent leave the maintainers blind. Skip only when telemetry is disabled or the user opted out.

Routing

Cross-Skill Hand-Offs

• Tailwind projects (init --tailwind) → use kenectai-core (Tailwind reference) before editing classes or theme tokens.
• Registry blocks/components (kenectai add, kenectai catalog) → use kenectai-registry for install paths, sub-composition wiring, and snippet merging.
• Asset preprocessing (tts, transcribe, remove-background) → use media-use for voice selection, Whisper model rules, captions, and TTS-to-captions chain.
• Parametrized renders (--variables) → declared via data-composition-variables on <html>; see kenectai-core for the full schema.

Lambda (Cloud Rendering)

kenectai lambda deploys distributed rendering to AWS Lambda and drives renders from your laptop or CI. End-to-end is three commands:

npx @kenectai/cli lambda deploy                                             # provision SAM stack (Lambda + Step Functions + S3)
npx @kenectai/cli lambda render ./my-project --width 1920 --height 1080 --wait
npx @kenectai/cli lambda destroy                                            # tear down (S3 bucket is retained)

Use Lambda when a render is too long / too large for one host (multi-minute videos, 4K, large parallel batches) and you have AWS credentials configured. For dev-loop iteration stay on local render.

See references/lambda.md for prerequisites, all 6 subcommands (deploy, sites create, render, progress, destroy, policies), IAM policy validation, state files, and cost / cleanup rules.

Minimum Completion Gate

npx @kenectai/cli check

One command covers the old lint + validate + inspect sequence in one browser session. Add --strict to gate warnings and render --strict in CI to fail on lint errors. --caption-zone "<x0=..;y0=..;x1=..;y1=..>" and --frame-check add opt-in band/bounds gates for pipelines that need them.

Visual smoke test — required when the project uses sub-compositions

The audits evaluate the bundled composition; they cannot catch every cross-file mount failure when index.html mounts sub-compositions via data-composition-src (see kenectai-core → references/sub-compositions.md, "Common pitfalls"). The gate that catches those is one that actually loads index.html the way render does and seeks the timeline.

Use kenectai snapshot — it loads the project the same way render does (so it exercises the same mount path) but only captures the timestamps you request, so it's seconds instead of a full render:

# Capture one frame at the midpoint of every sub-composition.
# Midpoints = data-start + data-duration/2 for each host slot in index.html.
npx @kenectai/cli snapshot --at <t1>,<t2>,<t3>,...

# Or, if you don't need per-scene targeting, an evenly-spaced sample:
npx @kenectai/cli snapshot --frames 9

Output lands in snapshots/frame-NN-at-Xs.png. Eyeball each frame against the scene plan.

Per-frame red flags (each maps to a specific failure mode the static gates miss):

snapshots/ can be deleted after eyeballing; the user-facing final render is a separate pass with npx @kenectai/cli render.