Stick figure channels are crushing it on YouTube: science, psychology, history explainers… with a few lines and a good story. And you don’t need to know how to draw or show your face.
Stickman Video Director is a free skill that turns a topic, an article or a script into a stick figure video. It installs in Claude Code and has two modes: one gives you the prompts so you generate the clips yourself, the other hands you the finished video.
From an idea to your stick figure video
You give it a topic
A loose idea, a link or a full script.
It writes the story
A 3-second hook, scenes, narration and sound effects.
You choose the mode
Director (prompts per scene) or Autopilot (finished video).
You approve
The script and, in Autopilot, a 20-second preview.
You get the video
Edited by you from the clips, or as a final file.
What Stickman Video Director is
- Repo: kaomei/stickman-video-director, by kaomei.
- MIT license: free, commercial use included (keeping the copyright notice if you redistribute the code).
- Around 5,000 stars and more than 800 forks on GitHub (5,011 stars as of November 8, 2026). Created in August 2026.
- 10 built-in styles: classic black and white, modern pop, prehistoric cave, cozy stories, historical drawing, minimal line, amber noir, color drawing, retro TV and survival thriller.
Installing it in Claude Code
You need Claude Code installed (it requires a paid Claude plan or a Claude Console account). Open it in a new folder for your project and paste this, which is the message the author recommends:
Install this skill for me: https://github.com/kaomei/stickman-video-director
Once it's installed, read the SKILL.md. Explain in plain language what each mode produces, what tools it needs and what the workflow looks like, with examples I can copy. Based on what I want to do, tell me what I'm missing and exactly what I need to do.Note
Codex or Claude Code. The author made the example videos with Codex and warns that results may vary with other agents. It works with Claude Code: the skill tells you at the start what you still need to set up.
The 2 modes
| Mode A · Director | Mode B · Autopilot | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Treatment, storyboard, one video prompt per scene and sound design | A finished video file, with voice, captions and gentle animation |
| Ideal length | Short: 30 seconds to 3 minutes | Long: narrated videos of 10 minutes or more |
| Who generates the clips | You, in Google Flow, Runway, Luma or Kling | The skill, with the services you connect |
| Editing | You, in CapCut, DaVinci or Premiere | Automatic |
| Where it works | Any assistant that reads skills (even a chat) | Agents with files and terminal: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor |
Mode A · Director
Use Director mode (mode A) to turn this topic into a stick figure video:
[WRITE YOUR TOPIC, PASTE YOUR TEXT OR DESCRIBE WHAT YOU NEED]
Requirements: horizontal 16:9, style A3 "Prehistoric cave", starting with 30 seconds.
Give me the director's treatment first. Once I approve it, give me the video prompts scene by scene.It returns one prompt per scene, along the lines of “stick figure with a club by the fire in a prehistoric cave”. You copy each one into your video generator, download the clips and edit them together with captions.
Mode B · Autopilot
Use Autopilot (mode B) to turn this topic into a YouTube video:
[PASTE THE CONTENT OR A LINK, OR DESCRIBE WHAT YOU WANT]
Requirements: 5 to 10 minutes, horizontal 16:9, style B1 "Minimal line", with voice, captions and sound effects.
First check how image generation, voice and video rendering are set up. Then give me a script and a 20-second preview with sound. Once I approve it, make the full video with the visuals synced to the narration and give me the final file.Here it doesn’t generate one video clip per scene: these are illustrations with gentle animation (cuts, pans and zooms) that follow the voice. That’s why it works for long videos.
What it really costs
- The skill: $0. It’s MIT, no subscriptions.
- Claude Code: you need a paid Claude plan.
- Whatever you connect behind it: if you use an image API, a voice API (like ElevenLabs) or a paid video generator, you pay for what you use. Each image costs cents; a long video with a hundred images and ten minutes of voice can come to several dollars. Check each service’s pricing before running a long video.
Tip
Always do the sample first. The Autopilot workflow itself shows you 20 seconds before making the whole video. Make the most of it: if you don’t like the style, change it there and don’t pay for a ten-minute video you’ll throw away.
The free route: Director mode + Google Flow
If you don’t want to pay to generate video:
- Use Director mode to get the script and the prompts per scene.
- Go to Google Flow. According to Google’s help pages, with or without a subscription you get 50 credits a day, and a Veo 3.1 Lite clip costs 10: about 5 clips a day.
- Generate the clips for 5 scenes each day. Credits don’t roll over, so a little every day is better.
- Edit the clips together with captions in CapCut or DaVinci Resolve (both have a free version).
Flow requires you to be over 18 and isn’t available in every country.
Watch out for YouTube monetization
The repo’s FAQ says these videos can be monetized. But YouTube is the one who decides, and its inauthentic content policy (formerly called “repetitious content”, renamed in July 2025) keeps mass-produced, repetitive or templated content out of the Partner Program.
Heads up
Use it to tell something of your own. Your story, your niche, your opinion, your script. A channel with its own voice that uses stick figures to explain things is one thing; a factory of cloned videos for several channels is exactly what YouTube wants to cut out of monetization.
Checklist for your first video
- Skill installed in Claude Code and tested with a short topic.
- Mode chosen: Director (free with Flow) or Autopilot (finished video).
- Script with your own angle, not a template.
- Prompts per scene (Director mode) or 20-second preview approved (Autopilot).
- Today’s clips in Flow (5) or image and voice services set up.
- Voice, captions and editing.
What it doesn’t do
- It isn’t magic on the first try. Characters can vary between scenes in Director mode. The author recommends giving it a reference image of the character and reusing it.
- It doesn’t upload anything to YouTube for you. Publishing, the thumbnail and the title are on you (the skill includes an optional kit for the thumbnail and the copy).
- It doesn’t guarantee monetization. That depends on YouTube and on how original your content is.
Is it worth it?
If you want a faceless channel and don’t know how to animate, it’s one of the best free options right now. Start with Director mode and Flow, make a short video and, if you like the format, move to Autopilot for the long ones.