Article to Short

Turn any news article or long-form post URL into a 30–60 second 9:16 short with stock visuals, narration, and captions. Use when the user shares a link and wants an edited summary, not a talking-head.

api00@api00

Install

openclaw skills install @api00/revid-article-to-short

Article / news → short

Take any URL with a substantial article body and produce a vertical short with voiceover + auto-cut stock b-roll + captions.

When to use this skill

Source is a news article, long-form blog, press release, or essay.
Output goal: an edited summary, voiceover + visuals, 30–60 s.
The user does NOT want a talking-head (use revid-blog-to-avatar-video for that).
For e-commerce product pages prefer revid-shopify-product-promo — same workflow but tuned defaults.

Inputs

Field	Required	Notes
`url`	yes	Article URL
`aspectRatio`	no	Default `9:16`
`targetDuration`	no	Default 45 s
`language`	no	Auto-detected; override for non-English

Step-by-step

Validate the URL.
POST the payload below.
Poll /status (canonical loop in the Polling section below).
Return videoUrl.

API call template

http

POST /api/public/v3/render
Host: www.revid.ai
Content-Type: application/json
key: $REVID_API_KEY

json

{
  "workflow": "article-to-video",
  "source": {
    "url": "{ARTICLE_URL}",
    "scrapingPrompt": "Summarize the article body. Skip ads, related links, navigation, and footer."
  },
  "aspectRatio": "9:16",
  "voice":    { "enabled": true, "stability": 0.6, "speed": 1.0, "language": "en-US" },
  "captions": { "enabled": true, "position": "middle", "autoCrop": true },
  "music":    { "enabled": true, "syncWith": "beats" },
  "media": {
    "type": "stock-video",
    "density": "medium",
    "animation": "soft",
    "quality": "pro",
    "videoModel": "pro",
    "imageModel": "good"
  },
  "options": {
    "targetDuration": 45,
    "summarizationPreference": "summarize",
    "soundEffects": true,
    "hasToGenerateCover": true,
    "coverTextType": "headline"
  },
  "render": { "resolution": "1080p", "frameRate": 30 }
}

Examples

Polling

After POST /render, poll until status === "ready":

bash

PID="<pid-from-render>"
while :; do
  R=$(curl -fsSL "https://www.revid.ai/api/public/v3/status?pid=$PID" \
        -H "key: $REVID_API_KEY")
  S=$(echo "$R" | jq -r .status)
  case "$S" in
    ready)  echo "$R" | jq .; break ;;
    failed) echo "FAILED: $R"; exit 1 ;;
    *)      sleep 5 ;;
  esac
done

In production prefer setting webhookUrl in the request body and skip polling.

Failure modes

Symptom	Fix
`scrape failed`	Pre-fetch the article body server-side and switch to `revid-script-to-video` with the body in `source.text`.
Off-topic stock visuals	Pass a tighter `scrapingPrompt` (e.g. "Focus on the financial markets angle, not the company history") and lower `media.density: "low"`.
Wrong language detected	Set `voice.language` and `options.language` explicitly.
Captions clip subjects	`captions.position: "top"`.