How to add an animated checklist with Claude

Three benefit lines slide in one after another on a dark card, and a green circle draws a white tick beside each.

Get this effect

  1. Switch to Code in your Claude Desktop App

  2. Install the skill (once)

    Show the prompt
    Install the Recharm video effects skill: download https://recharm-growth-staging.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/website/downloads/recharm-video-effects.zip and unzip it into ~/.claude/skills
  3. Ask for the effect

    Add an animated checklist to input.mp4
    Lines: Brighter in 7 days, Fragrance free, Dermatologist tested

Several videos, several effects, one ask

Put your clips in the folder, mention them with @, and ask for everything at once. Claude runs one tested script after another on each clip, then joins them.

Add an animated checklist to @clip1.mp4, put a sale badge on @clip2.mp4, give @clip3.mp4 a VHS look, then join all three with crossfades.

Settings you can change

Ask Claude to change any of these, or edit them at the top of the script.

SettingDefaultWhat it does
LINESBrighter in 7 days, Fragrance free, Dermatologist testedThe benefit lines, top to bottom.
START0.5Second the first line slides in.
GAP0.8Seconds between lines.
TICK_DELAY0.25Seconds after its line starts that the tick draws itself.
GREEN(34, 197, 94)Tick circle color.
Y0.80Where the card's center sits (0 = top, 1 = bottom).

Without the skill

Don’t want to install the skill? Paste this prompt into Claude Code and Claude writes the script itself.

Show the prompt
Add an animated checklist to input.mp4: a dark (15, 15, 25) rounded card at 75% opacity, 84% of the frame width, centered horizontally with its center 80% of the way down, holding three lines in white bold text 31 px tall: "Brighter in 7 days", "Fragrance free" and "Dermatologist tested". The card fades in over 0.3 seconds at 0.5 seconds. The lines slide 43 px in from the left and fade up over 0.3 seconds, starting at 0.5, 1.3 and 2.1 seconds. To the left of each line, a green (34, 197, 94) circle 44 px across pops in 0.25 seconds after its line starts and a white tick draws itself inside it over 0.25 seconds. Everything stays on to the end. Use Python with Pillow to draw it and ffmpeg to put it on the video (don't rely on ffmpeg's drawtext filter), keep the audio, and save it as output.mp4.

Run it without Claude

This is the exact script we tested. Save it as animated-checklist.py and run:

python3 animated-checklist.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Show the script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""Animated checklist: benefit lines slide in one by one on a dark card, each getting a green tick.

Usage: python3 animated-checklist.py input.mp4 output.mp4
Needs ffmpeg and Pillow (pip install pillow).
"""
import json
import math
import subprocess
import sys
from pathlib import Path

from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

LINES = ["Brighter in 7 days", "Fragrance free", "Dermatologist tested"]
START = 0.5              # second the first line slides in
GAP = 0.8                # seconds between lines
SLIDE = 0.3              # seconds each line takes to slide in
TICK_DELAY = 0.25        # seconds after its line starts that the tick draws itself
TICK = 0.25              # seconds the tick takes to draw
SIZE = 0.058             # text height as a share of the frame width
Y = 0.80                 # where the card's center sits (0 = top, 1 = bottom)
GREEN = (34, 197, 94)    # tick circle color
CARD = (15, 15, 25, 190) # card color and opacity
FONTS = ["/System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/Arial Bold.ttf",     # macOS
         "/usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf",  # Linux
         "C:/Windows/Fonts/arialbd.ttf"]                          # Windows
FONT_FILE = next((f for f in FONTS if Path(f).exists()), None) or sys.exit("No bold font found: add one to FONTS")


def ease_out(p):
    p = min(max(p, 0), 1)
    return 1 - (1 - p) ** 3


def tick(t, d):
    """A green circle with a white tick drawn stroke by stroke; d is the circle's width."""
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (d, d))
    pop = ease_out(t / 0.15)
    if pop <= 0:
        return img
    r = d / 2 * pop
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(img)
    draw.ellipse([d / 2 - r, d / 2 - r, d / 2 + r, d / 2 + r], fill=GREEN)
    # the tick runs from a to b (short stroke) then b to c (long stroke)
    a, b, c = (d * 0.27, d * 0.52), (d * 0.43, d * 0.68), (d * 0.74, d * 0.35)
    p = ease_out(t / TICK) * 2
    stroke = max(3, d // 9)
    if p > 0:
        k = min(p, 1)
        draw.line([a, (a[0] + (b[0] - a[0]) * k, a[1] + (b[1] - a[1]) * k)], fill="white", width=stroke, joint="curve")
    if p > 1:
        k = p - 1
        draw.line([b, (b[0] + (c[0] - b[0]) * k, b[1] + (c[1] - b[1]) * k)], fill="white", width=stroke, joint="curve")
    return img


def overlay(t):
    img = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
    if t < START:
        return img
    font = ImageFont.truetype(FONT_FILE, round(w * SIZE))
    row = round(w * SIZE * 2)
    d = round(w * SIZE * 1.4)
    pad = round(w * 0.05)
    card_w = round(w * 0.84)
    card_h = row * len(LINES) + pad
    x0, y0 = (w - card_w) // 2, round(h * Y - card_h / 2)
    fade = ease_out((t - START) / SLIDE)
    card = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
    ImageDraw.Draw(card).rounded_rectangle([x0, y0, x0 + card_w, y0 + card_h], radius=round(w * 0.04),
                                           fill=CARD[:3] + (round(CARD[3] * fade),))
    img.alpha_composite(card)
    for i, line in enumerate(LINES):
        t0 = START + i * GAP
        if t < t0:
            break
        p = ease_out((t - t0) / SLIDE)
        cy = y0 + pad // 2 + row * i + row // 2
        shift = round((1 - p) * w * 0.08)
        layer = Image.new("RGBA", (w, h))
        layer.alpha_composite(tick(t - t0 - TICK_DELAY, d), (x0 + pad, cy - d // 2))
        ImageDraw.Draw(layer).text((x0 + pad + d + round(w * 0.04), cy), line, font=font, anchor="lm", fill="white")
        layer = layer.transform(layer.size, Image.AFFINE, (1, 0, shift, 0, 1, 0))
        alpha = layer.getchannel("A").point(lambda v: round(v * p))
        layer.putalpha(alpha)
        img.alpha_composite(layer)
    return img


def probe(path):
    info = json.loads(subprocess.check_output(["ffprobe", "-v", "error", "-select_streams", "v:0", "-show_entries",
                                               "stream=width,height,r_frame_rate:format=duration", "-of", "json", path]))
    s = info["streams"][0]
    num, den = s["r_frame_rate"].split("/")
    return s["width"], s["height"], s["r_frame_rate"], float(num) / float(den), float(info["format"]["duration"])


def render(src, out):
    """Draw overlay(t) on every frame of src and save to out, keeping the audio."""
    ff = subprocess.Popen(["ffmpeg", "-y", "-v", "error", "-i", src,
                           "-f", "rawvideo", "-pix_fmt", "rgba", "-s", f"{w}x{h}", "-r", rate, "-i", "-",
                           "-filter_complex", "[0:v][1:v]overlay=shortest=1,format=yuv420p[v]",
                           "-map", "[v]", "-map", "0:a?", "-c:v", "libx264", "-crf", "18", "-c:a", "copy", out],
                          stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
    for i in range(math.ceil(duration * fps)):
        ff.stdin.write(overlay(i / fps).tobytes())
    ff.stdin.close()
    if ff.wait():
        sys.exit("ffmpeg failed")


src, out = sys.argv[1:3]
w, h, rate, fps, duration = probe(src)
render(src, out)

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