Remotion Self-Introduction: It’s not the code that’s holding us back—it’s the assets

Using the same tool, I had the AI create five different promotional videos. The worst-looking one wasn’t because the code was poorly written—it was because I didn’t have any footage to work with. Remotion is a tool that lets you create videos using the same methods as building websites. The screen is code—just change a single character and rebuild it. How did you go about making those changes along the way? Kody Intro Video (30 seconds): Following Kent C. Dodds' prompt, I had the AI do the research and make all the decisions on its own. The source material was official Kody images: a koala, a lantern, and a glowing ball. The AI also edited an additional 15-second version on its own. "A Day with Kody": I said, “Make something completely different”—replace the AI with a printmaking style. Vien's Self-Introduction: I said, "Rewrite it as your own self-introduction and prepare the content yourself." The AI generated everything programmatically—not a single image was included. As soon as I saw it, I asked, “Why does this seem so different from what Kody described? Was the material not prepared well enough?” Vien's Collection (Remastered): You need to include character art, actual clips from the first few episodes, and real inspection footage for this to hold up. I asked again, “Why do we have to bring up other things?” Then I changed the subject. JonesHong's Self-Introduction (38 seconds), all the content is based on experiences, photos, and pixel art avatars from my blog How Does AI Diagnose “Insufficient Data”? We have 0 images; Kody's project has 11 professional 3D images. AI admits it should have mentioned this before starting the project. All three scenes use the same layout: a circle on the left and a block of text on the right. There's no story—it's like reading a resume. There's too much text, and it's too small; the main character only takes up half the screen. How are the materials added? The AI gave me three options, and I chose “Both”: remake it using the original artwork, and add one more character. Choose one of three characters: Owl Butler (AI Recommendation), Crystal Ball Robot, or Black Cat Butler. I chose the Black Cat. The character art was generated using Gemini. The small AI that was sent out said it couldn’t do it, but the main AI determined that it had made an error in judgment and stepped in to generate the three images itself. Cut 1.5 seconds from each of the first three clips and treat them as actual clips from the final work. Check the text on the screen—it was originally written by the AI from memory, but later all of it was replaced with actual output; even the time, 08:16, was changed to 08:15. How does the image move? Remotion asks "Which frame is it now?" for every frame, then calculates where each object is, how transparent it is, and how big it is. It runs at 30 frames per second. The visuals and the soundtrack follow the same timeline, so the music's beat syncs up with the visuals. The soundtrack is also computer-generated and sounds like it came from an old video game console. How Far Has AI Come? It can be done Research, programming, and composing—I do it all myself. Each copy undergoes an automated check: length, volume, and whether there are any black screens. I realized that the description of the scene I had written from memory was incorrect, so I took the initiative to replace it with the actual details. I still need some help I’ll go ahead and do it even without reference material; I won’t say right away, “That won’t look good.” I was the one who stopped him from including Kody's videos in his portfolio as if they were his own work. No one has actually listened to the soundtrack from start to finish; they just adjusted the volume. Starting Point:A tweet by Kent C. Dodds| Font:Cubic 11 September 27, 2026