A Motion Design Studio for Claude Code: 20 Open-Source Repos, Checked
A viral list promises 20 open-source repos to run a motion design studio with Opus 5.5. We checked every one on GitHub: which are really open source, which two have gone quiet, and which skills make the agent write current animation code.
On October 16, 2026 @Asteri_eth posted a list that motion designers bookmarked fast: "20 open-source GitHub repos to run your own motion design studio with Opus 5.5", one pick per layer, from agent skills to the final export.
It is a good list. We checked all 20 repositories against GitHub's API, their licenses and AgentGid's own catalog. Seventeen were already in our catalog, and we added two more, Motion Canvas and the Rive web runtime. But "open-source" is not true of all twenty: four of them come without an open-source license, and two of those four carry real conditions for paid work.
The original post by @Asteri_eth on X (October 16, 2026)
The studio, layer by layer
The post's workflow runs brief → typography → motion → scene → sound → render → review → ship. Here is where each repo sits in it:
What "open-source" hides
Sixteen of the twenty carry an open-source license: MIT for most of them, MPL-2.0 for Satori and Mediabunny (change their files and you share those changes; your own code stays yours). The other four need a closer look before you use them for clients:
| Repo | What GitHub shows | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Remotion | No standard license | Remotion's own license: free for individuals and for companies of up to 3 employees; bigger companies need a company license (Creators seat $25 a month, per our Remotion entry). |
| GSAP | No license file | Free for everyone, commercial work included, under GSAP's "no charge" license. One exception: its license lists as a prohibited use putting GSAP into "tools that allow users to build visual animations without code" that compete with Webflow, which now backs GSAP. |
| Remotion Skills | No license | Official, from Remotion's own GitHub account; no license file, so the default copyright applies to the files themselves. |
| Motion AI Kit | No license, 41 stars | Official, from the Motion team, but small and new: its own description calls it "A Cursor plugin for Motion". |
FFmpeg is open source too, with a twist: LGPL 2.1 or later by default, GPL if you build it with GPL parts (our FFmpeg entry). For a studio that renders videos for clients, the practical rule is short: Remotion at a company of four or more costs money, GSAP is fine unless you are building a no-code animation editor, and everything else is free.
How alive each repo is
Stars say how many people noticed a project, not how many use it. Release dates say whether someone still ships it. Two of the twenty have gone quiet:
- Motion Canvas (19,370 stars): the last stable release is 3.17.2 from December 14, 2024; the newest tag on GitHub is an alpha from February 16, 2025, and the last commit is from July 2, 2026.
- Howler.js (25,394 stars): the last release is v2.2.4 from September 19, 2023; the last commit is from November 23, 2025.
Both still work and are widely used, but expect to fix things yourself. Every other repo on the list had a commit in 2026, and seven of them shipped a release in October.
The agent layer is the new part
Three of the twenty are not libraries at all but instructions for your coding agent. That is what makes a "studio with Opus 5.5" work: a model writes animation code from memory, and its memory is often a version behind. Skills hand it the current API first.
- Remotion Skills (5,281 stars) and GSAP Skills (16,532 stars, MIT) are both in AgentGid's skills catalog, and both come from the libraries' own teams.
- Motion AI Kit does not fit our skills catalog yet (41 stars, no license, packaged as a Cursor plugin), but it is the Motion team's own: one skill with best-practice notes for React, Vue and CSS springs.
The same idea runs through AgentGid's project kits: each one gives the agent the parts, versions and known traps before it writes a line. The 3D scene kit already picks Three.js for the renderer and GSAP for the animation, and the Short-video kit renders with MoviePy or FFmpeg and keeps a record of every license, the part this list skips.
A second list: 15 repos for an AI video studio
A day later @Marlenuii posted a similar list, "15 GitHub repos can replace a motion design team". Seven of its picks are already above (Remotion, Motion, GSAP, Three.js, React Three Fiber, Drei and FFmpeg). The other eight, checked the same way:
| Repo | Job in the studio | License | On AgentGid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excalidraw | Storyboards and scene sketches | MIT | /tools/ |
| Penpot | Layouts and style frames, an open design app | MPL-2.0 | not listed: a design app, not a library |
| Fontsource | Self-hosted fonts for every scene | MIT for the code; each font keeps its own license | /assets/ |
| Lucide | Icons | ISC | /tools/ and /assets/ |
| Blender | 3D models, environments and renders | GPL | the desktop app is not listed; Blender MCP lets an agent drive it |
| Lottie Web | Plays Lottie animations | MIT | /tools/ |
| Audacity | Cleans voiceovers and sound effects | GPLv3 | not listed: a desktop app |
| Whisper | Transcripts for captions | MIT | /tools/ |
Three things to know before you build on this list:
- Three of the fifteen are desktop apps you drive by hand (Penpot, Blender, Audacity), not code an agent runs. Blender is the exception that an agent can reach, through an MCP server.
- Two have slowed down. Lottie Web's last release is 5.13.0 from May 21, 2025, and its last commit is from September 1, 2025; for new work, dotLottie Web from the first list is the maintained player. Whisper's last release is from June 2025; our transcription kit starts with Faster Whisper, a reimplementation of the same models that its authors describe as faster.
- "Start with
npx create-video@latest" is Remotion's own starter, so Remotion's license applies from the first scene: free for individuals and companies of up to 3 employees.
Two more lists: HyperFrames, Blender and skills for motion
On October 17 two more posts made the rounds: @thegreatest_sv on "Blender for the 3D, GSAP for the motion, HyperFrames for the final render", and @0xMovez with ten skills and repos for explainer figures, 3D, physics and sound. Five of their picks are already above (GSAP, GSAP Skills, Motion AI Kit, React Three Rapier, React Postprocessing). The new ones, checked:
| Repo or skill | What it does | License and status |
|---|---|---|
| HyperFrames (HeyGen) | Write HTML, render video; ships as a Claude Code plugin | Apache-2.0, "no per-render fees or commercial-use thresholds" in its README; 66,572 stars, release v0.8.172 on October 18. On our skills catalog |
| MCP for Blender | Lets Claude or another model drive Blender | MIT, 31,539 stars; its own description says it is a community plugin, "not affiliated with the official Blender Foundation". In our catalog |
| Scenario for Blender | AI images, video, 3D and materials inside Blender, with a local MCP server for agents | GPL-3.0; needs a Scenario account with API access, and generations spend Scenario credits, priced before each run |
| Motion design skill (LottieFiles) | Timing, easing and Disney's principles adapted for UI | MIT, 2,295 stars; last commit May 18, 2026 |
| Anatomy, anatomy-reveal, hairline | Skills for isometric machine figures, exploded product views and line figures | Community skills on their authors' own sites; hairline and anatomy-reveal are MIT per their pages |
| Openverse API | Search for openly licensed sound and images | Each item keeps its own Creative Commons or public-domain terms, so credit is often required; we could not confirm the post's "5.2M+" figure on an official page |
Two notes on the posts. HyperFrames, like Motion Canvas above, has no license fee at any company size, which matters if you are weighing it against Remotion's company license. And GSAP being "now fully free" is true for websites and apps, with the one exception covered earlier: its license rules out no-code animation builders that compete with Webflow.
Where to start
- Explainer or product video from code: Remotion if you are alone or a team of up to three; Motion Canvas if you want an MIT license and accept a slower project. Add FFmpeg for the final encode.
- Animated web UI and landing pages: Motion for React components, GSAP for long timelines and SVG, Anime.js for a lighter MIT option.
- 3D shots: Three.js through React Three Fiber, with Drei for cameras and text, Postprocessing for the finish.
- Give your agent the skills first. Install Remotion Skills or GSAP Skills before the first prompt; it is the cheapest way to avoid code written for last year's API.
Every number here comes from GitHub's API, npm, the projects' own license pages or AgentGid's catalog, read on October 17, 2026. We did not build a studio with these tools ourselves.