Claude GIF - Ultimate GIF Creator Skill for Claude Code

GIF creation skill for Claude Code with 6 generation pipelines: AI video-to-GIF (Veo 3.1), programmatic animations (Remotion), AI image sequences (Gemini/FLUX.2), animated SVG-to-transparent-GIF (Playwright), video conversion (FFmpeg), and GIF editing/optimization. Professional palette optimization, perfect loop creation, platform-specific sizing, and dithering control.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Quick Start
• Commands
• Generation Pipelines
• Quality Presets
• Architecture
• Examples
• Requirements
• Uninstall
• Contributing

Installation

Manual Install (Unix/macOS/Linux)

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-gif.git
bash claude-gif/install.sh

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-gif/main/install.sh | bash

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-gif/main/install.sh > install.sh
cat install.sh
bash install.sh
rm install.sh

After install, run /gif setup in Claude Code to check and install dependencies.

Quick Start

# Interactive mode (detects intent, routes to the right pipeline)
/gif

# Convert a video to GIF
/gif convert video.mp4

# Create a programmatic animation
/gif create "loading spinner with bounce easing"

# Generate AI video and convert to GIF
/gif generate "coffee steam rising from a mug, close-up, loop"

# Optimize for Discord (under 256KB)
/gif optimize large.gif --platform discord

# Convert animated SVG to transparent GIF
/gif convert animation.svg

Commands

Generation Pipelines

1. Remotion (Programmatic Animation)

Claude writes React components with useCurrentFrame(), spring(), and interpolate(). Remotion renders to PNG frames, then assembles with two-pass palette optimization.

Best for: text animations, loading spinners, data visualizations, meme templates, motion graphics.

2. Veo 3.1 (AI Video to GIF)

Generates short AI video clips via Google Veo 3.1, converts to optimized GIF with optional perfect loop blending. Cost: ~$0.60-$4.00 per clip.

Best for: cinematic loops, product demos, abstract art, realistic motion.

3. SVG to Transparent GIF (Playwright)

Renders animated SVGs (SMIL/CSS) frame-by-frame in headless Chromium with omitBackground: true, producing transparent PNGs assembled into transparent GIFs.

Best for: icons, logos, UI micro-interactions, embeddable stickers. Zero new dependencies if Playwright is already installed.

4. Video to GIF (FFmpeg)

Two-pass palette pipeline: palettegen analyzes all frames for optimal 256-color palette, paletteuse renders with dithering and diff_mode=rectangle (only encodes changed pixels).

Best for: screen recordings, movie clips, reaction GIFs.

5. Image Sequence to GIF

Assembles a directory of images (PNG, JPG, WebP) into an animated GIF with natural sort ordering and palette optimization.

Best for: stop-motion, photo sequences, frame-by-frame art.

6. AI Image Sequence to GIF

Generates N frames with progressive prompt changes via Gemini or FLUX.2, then assembles into animated GIF.

Best for: morphing effects, illustrated animations, sticker-style GIFs.

Quality Presets

# Use a preset
bash scripts/gif_convert.sh --input video.mp4 --preset discord --output out.gif

# Platform auto-fit (iterates optimization until under target)
python3 scripts/gif_optimize.py --input big.gif --platform discord

Architecture

claude-gif/                        Parent orchestrator
  SKILL.md                         Command routing, presets, safety rules
  scripts/
    gif_convert.sh                 Core FFmpeg two-pass palette pipeline
    gif_optimize.py                Multi-strategy size reduction
    gif_loop.py                    Perfect loop crossfade blending
    gif_frames.py                  Frame extraction, assembly, SVG render
    setup.sh                       Dependency installer
    preflight.sh                   Safety checks
    check_deps.sh                  Dependency status (JSON)
  references/
    gif-optimization.md            Palette, dithering, color quantization
    platform-specs.md              Size limits per platform
    remotion-gif.md                Remotion animation patterns
    prompt-engineering.md           Veo prompts for loopable clips
    perfect-loops.md               Seamless loop techniques

claude-gif-create/                 Sub-skill: Remotion pipeline
claude-gif-generate/               Sub-skill: Veo AI video to GIF
claude-gif-convert/                Sub-skill: Video/images/SVG to GIF
claude-gif-optimize/               Sub-skill: Size and quality tuning
claude-gif-edit/                   Sub-skill: Modify existing GIFs

Integration with Existing Skills

Examples

Perfect Loop Creation

# Assess how well a GIF loops (MAE score)
python3 scripts/gif_loop.py --input animation.gif --assess

# Create seamless loop with crossfade blending
python3 scripts/gif_loop.py --input animation.gif --method crossfade --frames 5

# Ping-pong loop (forward then reverse)
python3 scripts/gif_loop.py --input animation.gif --method pingpong

Multi-Step Pipeline

# Generate AI video, convert to GIF, optimize for Slack
/gif generate "flickering candle flame, close-up, dark background"
# Then: /gif optimize output.gif --platform slack

Animated SVG to Transparent GIF

# Render SVG animation at 20fps for 3 seconds
python3 scripts/gif_frames.py --svg animation.svg --output icon.gif \
  --fps 20 --width 200 --height 200 --svg-duration 3

Requirements

Required:

• FFmpeg 6.0+
• Python 3.10+ with Pillow and numpy

Optional (by pipeline):

• Node.js 18+ (Remotion pipeline)
• Playwright + Chromium (SVG to GIF pipeline)
• gifsicle (lossy optimization - 30-50% extra size reduction)
• Veo API key / GEMINI_API_KEY (AI video generation)
• ImageMagick (fallback operations)

Run /gif setup to check all dependencies and install missing ones.

Uninstall

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-gif.git
bash claude-gif/uninstall.sh

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-gif/main/uninstall.sh | bash

Ecosystem

Claude GIF is part of a family of Claude Code skills:

Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue or submit a PR.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

Built for Claude Code by @AgriciDaniel

Author

Built by Agrici Daniel - AI Workflow Architect.

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