Story Setup

Prepare the project so story-new and story-render can run without surprises.

Arguments

• $0 = project directory (optional, default: current directory)

Steps

Step 0: Bootstrap the project if it is not here

The skills carry the craft: the rules, the schema and the story templates. The pipeline they drive, cli/ and src/, lives in the project repo. When someone installs only the skills with npx skills add, that pipeline is missing and has to be fetched once.

Detect it:

test -f cli/generate.ts && test -f src/Root.tsx && echo "project present" || echo "project missing"

If it is missing, look one level down as well, in case it was fetched before:

test -f story-telling/cli/generate.ts && echo "project in ./story-telling"

Still missing, fetch it. Tell the user what is about to be downloaded and where, then run one of these from the directory they want it in:

# Preferred: no git history, small download
npx --yes degit marketcalls/story-telling story-telling

# Fallback if degit is unavailable
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/marketcalls/story-telling story-telling

Then cd story-telling and continue with Step 1. Everything after this point runs from the project root, the directory holding package.json.

If the current directory is already the project, skip all of this.

Step 1: Check Node

node --version
npm --version

Node 20 or newer is required. Neither bun nor ffmpeg is needed: the CLI runs through npx tsx, and durations are measured with @remotion/media-parser.

Step 2: Install dependencies

npm install

Step 3: Create .env

If .env does not exist, copy the template and tell the user which keys to fill in:

cp .env.example .env

Never write a real key into .env.example, into a skill file, or into .claude/settings.local.json. If an existing key is found in any tracked file, stop and tell the user to rotate it.

Required:

• SARVAM_API_KEY from sarvam.ai, for narration
• FAL_KEY from fal.ai, for images

Optional:

• OPENAI_API_KEY, only for npm run draft. Writing story.json by hand

skips it entirely.

cli/env.ts also reads a .env in the parent folder, so a shared key file one level up works. SARVAM_KEY is accepted as an alias for SARVAM_API_KEY.

Step 4: Verify the keys

Do this before any long run: a bad key discovered after twelve images is an expensive way to find out.

set -a && . ./.env && set +a

# OpenAI, expect 200
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "openai %{http_code}\n" https://api.openai.com/v1/models \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPENAI_API_KEY"

# Sarvam, expect 200
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "sarvam %{http_code}\n" -X POST https://api.sarvam.ai/text-to-speech \
  -H "api-subscription-key: $SARVAM_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text":"key test","language_code":"en-IN","speaker":"shubh","model":"bulbul:v3"}'

# fal, expect IN_QUEUE then a validation error on the missing prompt, which costs nothing
curl -s -X POST https://queue.fal.run/fal-ai/flux-2-pro \
  -H "Authorization: Key $FAL_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{}' | head -c 120

Never print a key value back to the user or into a log.

Step 5: Check the Remotion install

npx remotion versions

Every @remotion/* package must report the same version, with the matching mediabunny. A mixed install fails at bundling with export 'Logging' was not found in 'mediabunny'. Fix with:

npx remotion upgrade
npm install 

Step 6: Typecheck and smoke test

npm run typecheck
npx remotion compositions

compositions should list one composition per story folder under public/. The shipped example prints Jhunjhunwala 30 1920x1080 1760 (58.67 sec), though its media files are gitignored, so a fresh clone shows the story with no assets until it is regenerated.

Step 7: Report

Tell the user:

• Node and npm versions found
• Whether .env was created or already existed, and which keys are missing
• Result of each key check, as a status code, never the key
• Whether Remotion versions are aligned
• The exact next command, for example

npm run story -- --slug my-story --context ./article.md --seconds 60

Example usage

/story-setup /story-setup ./story-telling

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: marketcalls
• Source: marketcalls/story-telling
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.