There are three ways to start a GreenLight Motion film inside the app: fill in the AI Motion Design brief in the Video Editor, run the GL Motion Film preset in an agent terminal, or simply ask an agent for a film. All three end the same way: an agent builds the film as a pipeline on the current board, and you approve it before anything is rendered.
The brief is the most complete way in. The agent reads your answers and asks only about what you left open, so a well-filled brief means fewer questions later.
Before you start
- Open the board where the film should be built. The pipeline, its cards and the final film all land on that board.
- Running the agent in the app uses GLAI, which is a PRO feature of the desktop app. Install at least one coding-agent CLI (Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI or OpenCode) and sign in to it once.
- Put your own material on the board if you have it: screenshots, a logo, product photos or clips. The agent uses your pictures before anything it captures from your website.
Open AI Motion Design
In the Video Editor, open Smart AI in the timeline toolbar and choose AI Motion Design… at the bottom of the menu. It is marked PRO; without a PRO licence the licence window opens instead. You don’t need to select a layer first.
The window is a brief in six steps: Product, Film, Look, Motion, Workflow and Review. Move with Next and Back, or click a step’s name at the top. The footer shows which step you are on. Esc or the ✕ button closes the window.
The window remembers your last answers on the Film, Look, Motion and Workflow steps, so a second film starts from your usual settings. The product, the pictures and the scenes you picked start empty each time.
Step 1: Product
Tell the agent what the film is about. You need at least one of these four answers before you can go on; the footer says “add a name, a website, a description or pictures” until you do.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Product name | The product’s name, used exactly as you write it. |
| Website | The agent opens the site, captures desktop and phone screenshots, and reads its copy, colours and logo. The screenshots go into scenes that show the product; the colours can become the film’s accent. |
| About it | What the product is and who it is for, the key message, the features to show, and the exact copy: names, prices, codes, dates. The agent writes every line of the film from this and never invents claims beyond it. |
| Pictures from this board | Optional. Click pictures and clips from the board to hand them to the agent (a tick marks each one), or click Upload to add new ones from your computer. The newest 60 are shown. Folders that earlier GL Motion films created are left out of this list. |
Step 2: Film
| Option | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| What is the film for? | Product promo (the product and its best reasons, with a call to action), Feature explainer (one or two features, shown working), Tutorial (step by step: how to do something in the product), Launch teaser (a hook, a reveal and a date or a link), Social clip (short, punchy, vertical-friendly), Agent decides | Product promo |
| Call to action | Optional text for the last scene, for example “Try it free · acme.example”. Leave it empty and the agent writes one. | Empty |
| Length | 10–60 seconds, in 5-second steps | 20 s |
| Format | 16:9 Landscape (1920×1080), 9:16 Vertical (1080×1920), 1:1 Square (1080×1080) | 16:9 |
| Language | English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Korean or Chinese. It sets the language of every line on screen and of the voice-over. | English |
Step 3: Look
Build it from decides where the scenes come from:
| Choice | What it means |
|---|---|
| Ready-made library | The film is built from the 275 animated library scenes in one clean style, re-worded and re-pictured with your copy. Fast and consistent. |
| Brand-new motion graphics | Every scene is designed from scratch for your brand and story: type, shapes, pictures, particles, real 3D. Slower, unique. The agent writes an art direction first, which you approve with the story. |
| Mix | Library scenes, plus new ones where nothing fits. |
| Agent decides | The agent picks what serves each beat best. |
With Ready-made library or Mix, a gallery of the library appears under the choice. Every scene plays when you point at it; click the scenes you like to pick them (optional — the agent uses them where they fit the story). The chips filter the gallery by category, Picked shows only your picks, and Search finds scenes by name or description.
Below that:
- Theme — Light, Dark or Agent decides.
- Accent — From the brand (the agent takes the colour from your website or logo; the default), one of five ready accents, your Video Editor project’s colours, or any colour from the custom colour well at the end of the row.
Step 4: Motion
The motion preset sets how things move. Every preset keeps the film’s timing and changes only the easing, and each card plays the same animation so you can compare them side by side. You can ask the agent for a different feel later, and it switches the preset for the whole film or one scene.
| Preset | Feel |
|---|---|
| Spring (Recommended) | Calm, premium: moves leave softly and settle with a long tail. The GreenLight launch-film feel. |
| Snappy | Energetic: fast, decisive arrivals for promos and social cuts. |
| Gentle | Slow and soft, cinematic. No overshoot at all. |
| Playful | Friendly: arrivals overshoot a little, pops bounce. |
| Elastic | Bouncy and elastic moves for playful brands. |
| Agent decides | The agent matches the motion to the product and the goal. |
Step 5: Workflow
How we work sets how much you see before the preview:
| Choice | What happens |
|---|---|
| Straight to the preview | The agent writes the story and builds the film on its own. You edit it in the preview and approve the render. |
| Step by step | You approve the story, pick a storyboard direction, then approve the preview. This is the default. |
| Agent decides | Quick for a short, clear brief; step by step when there is a lot to get right. |
Storyboard first? (not shown with Straight to the preview):
- Two variants — two directions, one frame per shot. You pick one before the preview. This is the default.
- Three variants — more choice: three directions side by side.
- Skip it — straight from the approved scenario to the preview.
Voice-over — Yes, No or Agent decides. The voice-over is written with the shots and recorded after you approve the preview; see Voice-Over and Sound Effects.
Deliver — pick any of these (the Video Editor project is selected by default):
| Deliverable | What you get |
|---|---|
| Rendered video | An MP4, placed on the board. |
| Video Editor project | A GLEA project with every scene as an HTML clip. |
| After Effects | An agent builds the film in After Effects. After Effects must be installed and open. |
See Rendering and Exports for what each one contains.
Step 6: Review and run
Review shows every answer on one page, with an Edit link beside each step, and a sentence that sums up what will happen. On the right, the Run with panel has two tabs.
GLAI
Runs the agent inside the app. Pick the agent:
- Claude Code CLI (Anthropic)
- Codex (OpenAI)
- Antigravity CLI (Google)
- OpenCode (open source, any model)
Click Start motion design. The app saves your Video Editor project and the brief, switches to the Canvas (where the film’s cards appear), and opens the agent terminal there. GLAI starts the chosen agent in the board’s folder with the GreenLight Dash and GL Motion skills and your brief. The agent asks only what the brief leaves open, then builds the pipeline.
Outside the app
For your own terminal, IDE or agent. The panel lists what the prompt will hand over: the path to the GL Motion skill, the path to the GreenLight Dash skill, the brief (“Saved to the board when you copy” until you copy), and the board’s address and ID.
Click Copy for your agent. The brief is saved to the board and a prompt with every path it needs is copied to the clipboard; paste it into your agent. The agent reaches the board through the app, so keep GreenLight Dash open while it works. Show the prompt displays the full prompt if you want to read or copy it by hand. Pressing Copy again with the same answers reuses the saved brief instead of saving another copy.
In the web version, only Outside the app is available, and the prompt carries the brief itself.
Briefs are saved on the board in the greenlight-motion-briefs folder, named after the product.
Start from the terminal: the GL Motion Film preset
When you’d rather talk the film through with the agent:
- Open an agent terminal: GLAI from the top bar, or the Video Editor’s agent terminal.
- Click Presets in the terminal and choose GL Motion Film (under Skills).
- The agent loads the GL Motion skill and asks what to build.
Without a brief, the agent starts with one round of questions. It always asks whether you want brand-new motion graphics, the ready-made library or a mix. It also asks what the film is for, the key message and call to action, the length and format, what assets you have (logo, photos, screenshots, brand colours, exact copy), whether you want a voice-over, and a light or dark look.
Just ask an agent
In any agent terminal of the app you can simply ask for a film, for example:
Make a 15-second promo for our spring sale. The code is SPRING50, it ends May 3, and here are two product photos.
A plain request like this runs straight to the preview: the agent decides everything you didn’t say, tells you in one line what it chose, and asks a question first only when it doesn’t know what the film is about. Say “step by step” to get the guided way instead, where you approve the story and a storyboard direction before the preview.
Straight to the preview or step by step
| Straight to the preview | Step by step | |
|---|---|---|
| Questions first | None, unless the agent doesn’t know what the film is about | Only what the brief leaves open |
| Scenario | Written as the agent’s plan; it doesn’t wait for you | You approve the story in words |
| Storyboard | None | Two or three directions to pick from, unless you skip it |
| Preview | The one approval | The last approval |
| Render | After you approve the preview in the chat | After you approve the preview in the chat |
Where to go next
- The Film Pipeline on Your Board — what appears on the canvas after you start
- Editing the Film Preview — change the film yourself before you approve it
- GLAI — install and launch the coding-agent CLIs
- Using GL Motion Outside the App — run the same skill in your own agent
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