Last updated: October 6, 2026

Opus 5.5 videos: the viral prompts and how to make your own

Since Claude Opus 5.5 came out, people have been posting motion graphics reels, explainers, 3D scenes and even small games that it made from a single prompt. The awesome-opus5-5-videos list alone collects 475 of them. Below are the prompts behind the best-known ones and the steps to make your own.

The prompt that started it

Most of the first wave used the same one-line prompt. 58 entries in the list are this prompt or a close copy of it:

make a dynamic 15-second motion graphics video that shows what an incredible motion designer you are, like it's your showreel for a résumé. go all out.

Popular variants swap the subject for your own product or website, add a length (10, 15 or 40 seconds) or a format such as 1080×1080 for social.

Examples by type, with their prompts

Real prompts from the list, quoted as their creators posted them. Open the post to see the video.

Motion graphics

288 in the list. Showreels, product promos, kinetic type.

make a dynamic 15-second motion graphics video that shows what an incredible motion designer you are, like it's your showreel for a résumé. go all out.

Make a dynamic 15-second motion graphics video that shows why [your product] is the best at [what it does], like a showreel. Go all out: 1080×1080, 1s hook, loop.

4 seasons passing outside a train window, a cozy carriage, a cup of coffee on the table, Grand Budapest Hotel style

create a motion design video of a poster breaking out of its own frame.

Explainers

62 in the list. Concepts, history, how-things-work.

A video explaining recursion, where every explanation about recursion has a radically different video style, make this self-referential & clever & fast moving.

make a video highlighting key moments in the history of AI.

请用Manim给我制作一个导数概念学习的视频，要求通俗易懂，并且有例子，引人思考。配音使用edge-tts

3D scenes

55 in the list. Three.js and shaders.

Make a 2-minute sand animation that tells the story of 250 years of U.S. history. Keep it lively, engaging, and tasteful. Add appropriate background music and sound design.

Show me what goes on inside an AI data centre.

Games and interactive

70 in the list. Playable in the browser.

can you make a 3d game where you walk around and spot cats inside of a van gogh painting? we can start with stary night and its town

Create a 1-on-1 card game like Hearthstone. Just make it. As best you can. In pixel art style.

Source: awesome-opus5-5-videos on GitHub

Make your own in 3 steps

1. Open Claude (app or claude.ai) on a paid plan and pick Opus 5.5, or start Claude Code with Opus 5.5.
2. Paste one of the prompts above and add: "Build it as a single self-contained HTML file."
3. Open the result in your browser and screen-record it. For a clean MP4 file, use one of the methods below.

How an "Opus 5.5 video" is made

1. Storyboard: Opus 5.5 writes a shot list with the timing of every scene.
2. Code: it writes one renderer per scene, where every frame is a pure function of the time t.
3. Frames: a headless Chrome steps through t and saves one image per frame.
4. Encode: ffmpeg joins the frames into an H.264 MP4 and can add a voiceover and subtitles in a second pass.

Source: OrcaRouter: what "plan a video" actually produces

Get a real MP4 file

Screen recording is fine for a quick post. For a clean, frame-perfect MP4 at a fixed frame rate, render the animation instead. Three ways:

Method 1: ClaudeAnimationBase in Claude Code (easiest)

ClaudeAnimationBase is an open-source (MIT) starter kit by John Heibel: p5.js with p5.brush, the Clawd character with 31 acted emotions, and a guide that tells the model how to animate. Its author made all test videos with Opus 5.5 on xhigh effort in Claude Code.

1. Install Node.js, Google Chrome, ffmpeg, and Claude Code on a paid Claude plan or with an API key.
2. Clone the kit, install it and start Claude Code in the folder:

   git clone https://github.com/JohnHeibel/ClaudeAnimationBase.git
   cd ClaudeAnimationBase
   npm install
   claude            # start Claude Code, pick Opus 5.5 with /model

3. Give Opus 5.5 the first prompt from the README:

   Read ANIMATION_GUIDE.md, then make a 15-second video of Clawd trying to catch a butterfly.

4. Opus 5.5 writes the storyboard, then the scene code. When it is done, render the clip:

   node render.mjs --clip --out=out/video.mp4

5. Open out/video.mp4, or open studio.html in Chrome to scrub through it. Ask for changes in plain words ("slow down the jump", "make the sky pink") and render again.

Without a dedicated GPU, rendering takes seconds per frame. The README suggests avoiding watercolor fills on integrated graphics.

Source: ClaudeAnimationBase on GitHub

Method 2: one HTML file and a render script (any style)

For motion graphics, title cards or data animations you do not need a kit. Ask Opus 5.5 for a single HTML file that follows a simple contract, then render it with the script below.

Write one self-contained HTML file, 1920x1080, that draws a 10-second animation on a <canvas>.
Set window.DURATION = 10 and define async window.seek(t) that paints the frame for time t in seconds.
Every pixel must depend only on t: no Date.now(), no requestAnimationFrame loop,
no CSS transitions, no unseeded Math.random().
Scene: [describe your scene, palette and motion style here]

Save the file as scene.html next to this script, then run it:

// capture.mjs: node capture.mjs scene.html 30
import { chromium } from 'playwright';
import { mkdirSync } from 'node:fs';
import { resolve } from 'node:path';
import { pathToFileURL } from 'node:url';
import { execFileSync } from 'node:child_process';

const [file, fpsArg = '30'] = process.argv.slice(2);
const fps = Number(fpsArg);
mkdirSync('frames', { recursive: true });
const browser = await chromium.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage({ viewport: { width: 1920, height: 1080 } });
await page.goto(pathToFileURL(resolve(file)).href);
const total = Math.round((await page.evaluate(() => window.DURATION)) * fps);
for (let i = 0; i < total; i++) {
  await page.evaluate((t) => window.seek(t), i / fps);
  await page.screenshot({ path: `frames/${String(i).padStart(5, '0')}.png` });
}
await browser.close();
execFileSync('ffmpeg', ['-y', '-framerate', String(fps), '-i', 'frames/%05d.png',
  '-c:v', 'libx264', '-pix_fmt', 'yuv420p', 'out.mp4'], { stdio: 'inherit' });

npm init -y
npm install playwright
npx playwright install chromium
node capture.mjs scene.html 30   # writes out.mp4

We ran this script with Playwright 1.56 and ffmpeg 6 on a test scene; it writes one PNG per frame to frames/ and then out.mp4.

Source: Hugging Face: a deterministic render pipeline for Opus 5.5 videos

Method 3: Remotion or HyperFrames for longer videos

• Remotion (React) and HyperFrames (HTML, by HeyGen) are frameworks built for rendering video from code. They handle timelines, audio tracks and rendering for you.
• Ask Opus 5.5 for a scene-by-scene storyboard first, approve it, then let it write the composition one scene at a time.
• For narration, generate the voice with a TTS service, keep the word timestamps and let Opus 5.5 time the subtitles and animation to them.
• Render a half-resolution draft first, then the full-resolution final.

Remotion · HyperFrames

Source: Apiyi: making videos with code using Opus 5.5

More prompt templates

Each prompt asks for a storyboard first, which is the step that makes the biggest difference to the result.

Product promo (15 s)

First write a storyboard for a 15-second product promo for [product]: 4 scenes, bold type, one accent color, fast cuts. Wait for my OK, then build it as one HTML canvas file with window.DURATION and window.seek(t).

Explainer with subtitles (30 s)

Make a 30-second explainer of [topic] in 5 scenes. Use simple flat icons drawn in SVG, line-by-line subtitles at the bottom, and a calm pace. Storyboard first, then code.

Data animation

Animate this data as a bar chart race over 20 seconds: [paste CSV]. Sort bars every frame, show the year in the corner, ease every change. Every frame must depend only on t.

Cartoon short (ClaudeAnimationBase)

Read ANIMATION_GUIDE.md, then make a 15-second video of Clawd trying to catch a butterfly.

Tips that save time and tokens

• Start with 10 to 15 seconds. Long pieces multiply both render time and tokens.
• Approve the storyboard before any code is written. Fixing a shot list is cheap, fixing finished code is not.
• Insist on determinism: if a frame depends on anything but t, the render will flicker or differ between runs.
• Let Opus 5.5 look at its own output. Render a few stills or a contact sheet and ask it to review them; it reads images.
• Keep text and narration out of the first pass and add them once the motion works.

What Opus 5.5 can and cannot do for video

Source: Claude Opus 5.5 model overview (Anthropic)

What it costs

• Opus 5.5 costs $4.00 per 1M input tokens and $20.00 per 1M output tokens on the API. In the Claude apps and Claude Code it is on paid plans only; the free plan has Sonnet and Haiku.
• Example arithmetic: a session that reads 300,000 tokens and writes 60,000 tokens costs $2.40 at list price. Each round of changes adds to that.
• Apiyi's guide puts a 30-second explainer at "a few cents to around one dollar" in model cost, plus any TTS fees.
• Rendering itself runs on your machine and costs nothing beyond time.

Opus 5.5 price and specs Compare costs in the calculator

Examples and further reading

Two places collect these videos with their prompts. awesome-opus5-5-videos on GitHub lists 475 (browsable at skillry.dev), and Claude Video (claudevideo.org) indexes 1,235, 457 of them with the creator's full prompt. Both are independent of Anthropic.

Source: skillry.dev

Source: Claude Video gallery

Source: explainx: how the viral Opus 5.5 cartoons are made

Independent guide. Not affiliated with Anthropic. Prices are Anthropic list prices in US dollars.