Your Showrunner OS, running on your Mac
The short walkthrough to get Claude Code set up and your Showrunner OS working. Session 1 gets you installed and produces your Brand Baseline, the foundation file. Session 2 runs the Writer’s Room and gives you a Concept Shortlist with evidence. Session 3 turns your shortlist into beat sheets and gets your first videos recorded. Session 4 turns those raw takes into finished videos, on a free editing stack your system drives for you. Session 5 packages each video for the click: the words, the photo, a free build with your own hands, and a grade before you upload. Download once, then run the methods in order.
brand-baseline.md, the distillation of your brand. Everything after is built around it.
Open the Terminal
The Terminal is just a window where you type commands instead of clicking. Nothing you do here can break your Mac, and you’ll only need a handful of commands.
- Press ⌘ + Space to open Spotlight.
- Type Terminal and press Return.
A plain window opens with a blinking cursor. That’s it, leave it open.
Install Claude Code
Paste this one line into the Terminal and press Return. It downloads and installs Claude Code. No other setup, nothing to configure.
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Have Homebrew already? brew install --cask claude-code works too. Either is fine.
On Windows, not Mac? The steps are identical; grab the Windows install command from the Claude Code setup docs.
When it finishes, start Claude Code by typing:
claude
The first time, it opens your browser to log in. Log in with the same account as your Claude subscription.
claude again.If claude ever says “command not found”, fully quit Terminal (⌘Q), reopen it, and try again.
Get your Showrunner OS
Your Showrunner OS lives here: github.com/cmagnoletes/showrunner-os-starter. On that page, click the green Code button, then Download ZIP.
Unzip it (double-click the downloaded file), and move the folder somewhere you’ll remember, like your Documents folder. Inside is the whole system as it stands today: the Brand Baseline interview and the empty brand-baseline.md, the root config (CLAUDE.md), and every method and skill from the sessions below (the Writer’s Room and Viewer Soul, the Beat Sheet and the Hold, the Fast Tracked Assembly Line, the Marquee), with the channel/ and videos/ templates they write into.
Compare this folder with https://github.com/cmagnoletes/showrunner-os-starter and add every file that is new or updated there: methods/, .claude/skills/, the videos/ templates and README, CLAUDE.md and README.md. Never touch brand-baseline.md, anything in channel/ that I filled in, or my videos/00X/ folders. Then commit.
Drop your raw material in
Inside that folder, make a new folder called inventory and put anything that already describes you, your business, or your ideal client into it. Raw files are fine, you don’t need to convert anything, Claude will transcribe audio and video and pull colors and fonts straight out of decks and PDFs.
- Your website (or just the About / services page saved as text, or the URL)
- Your brand decks, pitch decks, one-pagers (raw PDF or Keynote is fine)
- Recorded sales or discovery calls (the raw audio or video, no transcript needed)
- A few LinkedIn posts or anything written in your own voice
- Testimonials, reviews, case studies
Whatever you have. Thin is fine, the interview fills the gaps.
Run it
Now open Claude Code inside that folder. The easy way on a Mac: type cd and a space in the Terminal, then drag the folder from Finder onto the Terminal window, and press Return. That points the Terminal at your folder.
# type "cd ", then drag your folder in, then Return: cd ~/Documents/showrunner-os-starter # then start Claude Code: claude
Once Claude Code is running in the folder, paste this instruction and press Return:
Read brand-baseline-prompt.md and run it on me. Use everything in the inventory/ folder and my website as source material, transcribing any audio or video and pulling brand tokens from any decks. Mine first, then interview me only on what's missing. Write the finished result to brand-baseline.md.
It reads your files, drafts what it can, then interviews you one question at a time. Answer honestly. Where it proposes wording, it marks it as proposed until you approve, your words win. Budget 45 to 60 minutes. When it’s done, your brand-baseline.md is filled in.
inventory/. That’s where the language your buyers actually use is hiding, the stuff you take for granted but your ideal viewer needs to hear.When it’s done, your foundation file exists, and everything that follows reads it first. Took the private-repo route? Ask Claude Code to commit and push it: “commit brand-baseline.md and push”.
Session 2 decides what you make, on evidence. The Writer’s Room method interviews you from your Baseline, and the Viewer Soul skill harvests real outliers in your niche (view counts, multiples, and their thumbnails, saved for packaging later). One step.
Run the Writer’s Room
One instruction:
Read methods/signal/writers-room-prompt.md and run it on me.
Budget 60 to 90 minutes the first time. The only extra tool it needs is yt-dlp (free); your Claude checks for it and installs it if it’s missing. It interviews you from your Baseline, walks you through three quick demand checks in your browser, runs the Viewer Soul harvest, and writes your pillars, your swipe file, and your Concept Shortlist: 4 to 6 video concepts, each with its evidence.
Session 3 turns concepts into videos. The retention doctrine lives in the-hold.md (the four steps that keep a stranger watching), the Beat Sheet method applies it to your shortlist, every video gets its own videos/ folder, and channel/home-studio.md holds the five-minute pre-shoot checklist. Then you record. Two steps.
Run the Beat Sheet
One instruction:
Read methods/package/beat-sheet-prompt.md and run it on me.
Budget 30 to 45 minutes. It shows you your shortlist, you pick your top 2 or 3 concepts, and it builds a recordable beat sheet for each in one pass: the hook (3 options, you pick), the spine with re-hooks marked, a real stake before every section, the payoff and one ask. All of it in your voice, from your Baseline. Where a true story of yours belongs, it leaves a flagged spot instead of inventing one; fill those before you record.
Set up once, batch-record
Read the Home Studio Guide (a PDF you keep): a credible setup with gear you already own, in about an hour the first time. After that, channel/home-studio.md in your repo holds the five-minute pre-shoot checklist.
Then record every beat sheet in the same session, two or more videos, ideally three. Phone at eye level, window in front of you, mic below your chin, energy up about twenty percent. First takes are practice, and that’s the plan working: editing is the next session, so all it needs from you is raw footage in the can.
Session 4 turns your raw takes into finished videos. The editing pipeline transcribes your recording, writes an edit plan you approve before a single cut is made, assembles the cut in DaVinci Resolve (the free edition), lets you review it with your own ears, then renders and captions it. The whole editing stack costs zero. Two steps.
Install the free DaVinci Resolve (once)
Download it from blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve. Pick the plain “DaVinci Resolve” button, the free one, NOT “DaVinci Resolve Studio”. Blackmagic asks for a short registration form; that’s normal. It needs a recent operating system, so if the installer refuses, update your OS first and budget the extra time.
After installing, open Resolve once and click through its first-run questions, then quit it. That’s the only thing you install by hand; your Claude installs everything else on the first run.
Run the Fast Tracked Assembly Line
One instruction, with the path to one of the recordings from step 8:
Read methods/package/assembly-line-fast-track-prompt.md and run it on me. My raw recording is at ~/Movies/MY-TAKE.mov.
Stopped and restarted the camera? Very common. Just name every file (“my recordings are take1.mov, take2.mov and take3.mov in ~/Movies”) — it stitches them in order and edits across them like one take.
The first run walks you through setup (budget 20 to 30 minutes, once; after that it’s instant). Every editing session then starts with the same three moves it will hold you to: open Resolve, open your project, click Workspace > Scripts > resolve_bridge.
Then the pipeline runs: it transcribes, shows you a written edit plan (nothing gets cut before you approve it), builds the timeline in Resolve with red markers on every join it wants your ear on, and you scrub the cut and ask for fixes in plain words. When you’re happy, it renders an upload-ready file plus a captions file timed to your final cut. Upload both together.
Session 5 packages a video for the click. You have two shots at the same viewer: the title you locked in Session 2, and the thumbnail. The packaging doctrine lives in the-marquee.md (two shots, one promise), and the Marquee method, with its skill, writes the thumbnail words with you, briefs the photo, grades what you build out of 55, and shows it inside a mock YouTube feed next to the real outliers from your Session 2 harvest. You build the thumbnail with your own hands, on free tools. Nothing generated, nothing bought. Two steps. The full library of 28 shapes, each with a live wall of real examples, is the Thumbnail Library: invite-only, free for Guild members, and your invite is in the community post.
Run the Marquee
One instruction per video you recorded, pointed at that video’s folder:
Read methods/package/marquee-prompt.md and run it on me for videos/001/.
It reads your baseline, your locked title, and that video’s beat sheet. Then it shows you four simple thumbnail shapes with real channels behind each, and you pick one by looking. It writes the word candidates in three lenses (curiosity, impact, controversy), two to five words each, never the title’s words, and you pick one or rewrite it. Then it briefs the photo: the expression, where you look, window light, plain wall, five shots in a minute. And it stops there, because the next part is yours.
The title stays locked. Session 2 chose it with evidence and your video was written to keep it. The thumbnail is the other shot; the method never rewrites the title.
Build it free, then bring the PNG back
Shoot the photo on your phone. Cut yourself out for free: Photopea‘s Magic Cut in the browser, NoBG.space (runs on your own machine, nothing uploaded), or what’s already on your computer, Preview on a Mac and Paint on Windows. Then compose in Canva or Photopea: 1280 by 720, your brand font and colors from your baseline, the words in the left two-thirds, the bottom-right corner empty. One accent color, on the payoff word only. Export a PNG.
Then tell your Claude where it is:
Here's the thumbnail: ~/Movies/001-thumbnail.png. Grade it.
It scores eleven criteria out of 55, runs six pass-or-fail tests (glance, postage stamp, squint, three elements, title split, clickbait), flags anything on the red-flag list, and gives you one targeted fix. Then it renders videos/001/marquee-preview.html: your thumbnail inside a mock home feed, the watch-page sidebar, search, a phone, and a glance strip at 168 and 120 pixels, with the real outliers from your Session 2 harvest as the neighbors. Open it in your browser and look at the small sizes first. Iterate until it ships at 42 or more.
Canva’s own background remover is a paid feature. Don’t pay for it; the free ones above are better anyway. And never let a tool generate your face: a face that’s almost you reads as fake in a feed, and the grader flags it.
packaged in your shortlist, and videos/00X/marquee.md written and committed. Publishing is the next part of the system.The one rule that matters
Augment, never regenerate. From now on, brand-baseline.md is the single source of truth for your whole system. When your brand sharpens, you edit that same file, you never start a fresh one or make a “v2”. It’s the file every future part of your Showrunner OS reads first, so it stays canonical and living.
claude doctor in the Terminal, it checks your setup and tells you what’s wrong. Most issues are just “log in with a Pro/Max account” or “quit and reopen Terminal”. And you can always ping me.
That’s the whole thing. See you inside The Guild.