Tokovo

Tokovo is an AI-native studio for multi-device shows that happen inside phones.

Create cinematic chat dramas, social-feed stories, screen-recorded episodes, and short-form series without rebuilding phone screens in After Effects. Tokovo gives AI and creators a full phone-native production stage: one or many simulated devices, app worlds, OS surfaces, camera direction, sound, voice, backgrounds, overlays, and deterministic rendering.

Watch the demo clip

What Tokovo Does

Tokovo turns a phone-native story into a repeatable production pipeline:

1. Generate or write a script, characters, tone, and episode arc.
2. Place the action inside one or many simulated devices: chats, feeds, DMs, notifications, calls, lockscreens, and screen recordings.
3. Direct pacing, camera moves, captions, keyboard input, sound, voice, and cliffhangers.
4. Preview the episode in browser.
5. Render a vertical MP4 for Shorts, Reels, TikTok, and serialized story formats.

The public repo exposes the engine behind that studio: TypeScript episode definitions, app simulators, device systems, render orchestration, validation, and showcase assets.

Why It Exists

Phone-native stories are already a format. People watch drama, comedy, product narratives, and social arcs through chats, feeds, DMs, screenshots, and recordings. Production is still too manual: screen recording, editing layers, recreating messages, nudging timelines, and fixing every variant by hand.

AI can now generate scripts, branches, edits, translations, captions, and variations. Tokovo gives that AI a controlled studio instead of a blank video canvas:

• generate one episode concept and render many platform-ready cuts
• stage one phone, split-screen phones, or multi-device narrative beats in the same episode
• direct the phone OS, app state, camera, sound, voice, and timing as structured data
• keep every story beat and render artifact reviewable
• ship repeatable series instead of one-off timeline projects
• avoid manual After Effects work for phone-screen stories

What You Can Build

Tokovo's v1 target surface covers:

Surface	Package	What it covers
Device and OS	@tokovo/devices, @tokovo/device-*	iPhone-style frames, multi-device scenes, status UI, keyboard, notifications, camera anchors
Messaging	@tokovo/apps-whatsapp, @tokovo/apps-imessage	chats, group threads, typing, read states, media-style cards
Social apps	@tokovo/apps-instagram, @tokovo/apps-x, @tokovo/apps-snapchat	feeds, stories, profiles, DMs, notifications
Work apps	@tokovo/apps-linkedin, @tokovo/apps-teams	message threads, channels, profiles, activity surfaces
Storytelling tools	@tokovo/overlay, @tokovo/background, @tokovo/voice	captions, backgrounds, procedural sound, music/audio cues, voice tracks
Rendering	video-runner, @tokovo/render-service	local preview, MP4 export, render-service primitives

Render The Showcase

Start with the creator-series showcase:

EPISODE_ID=v2-creator-series-showcase pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast

The render writes an MP4 and manifest under apps/video-runner/out/.

Then try app-specific showcases:

EPISODE_ID=whatsapp-flagship-v2 pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast
EPISODE_ID=instagram-flagship-v2 pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast
EPISODE_ID=x-flagship-v2 pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast
EPISODE_ID=typewriter-flagship-v2 pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast

First 10 Minutes

pnpm install
pnpm validate
EPISODE_ID=v2-creator-series-showcase pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast

For interactive preview:

pnpm --filter video-runner dev

Local Development

Requirements:

• Node.js 22 or 24
• pnpm 10.28.2

Install dependencies:

pnpm install

Open the main development surfaces:

pnpm dev

Preview only the renderer:

pnpm --filter video-runner dev

Showcase Episodes

These are good first renders when checking the v1 target surface:

Episode ID	Shows
v2-creator-series-showcase	lockscreen, notifications, app switching, typed keyboard, camera direction
multi-device-exhaustive	parallel phones, split pacing, screen recording, cross-app continuity
whatsapp-flagship-v2	chat list, group thread, updates, calls, typed replies
instagram-flagship-v2	story, DM, profile, creator-facing pacing
x-flagship-v2	timeline, post detail, replies, notifications
typewriter-flagship-v2	typewriter app, procedural sound effects, text timing
screen-recording-exhaustive	OS chrome and screen-recording realism

The full showcase matrix is documented in apps/docs/app/showcase/page.mdx.

Repo Map

Path	Purpose
packages/episodes	canonical episode definitions, release/studio catalogs, validation
packages/dsl	timeline builder primitives for devices, camera, OS, audio, overlays
packages/compiler	lowers episode definitions into renderable IR
packages/core	deterministic runtime, registries, logging, validation
packages/renderer	React render surface and camera-aware layout
packages/apps-*	app simulators for phone-native stories
packages/device-*	OS-owned interactions: camera, keyboard, notifications
apps/video-runner	preview/render app
apps/docs	public documentation site
apps/web	marketing site
apps/render-service	render-service CLI and render orchestration primitives

Authoring Flow

1. Create a *.episode.ts file in packages/episodes/src.
2. Define metadata with defineEpisode.
3. Build the timeline with the code-first episode builder.
4. Register the episode in the release or studio catalog.
5. Validate with pnpm validate.
6. Preview in video-runner.
7. Render with pnpm --filter video-runner render:fast.

Release Gate

The canonical release gate is:

pnpm verify:release

For focused local work, these are the checks most contributors will use:

pnpm lint:ox
pnpm lint:release
pnpm -s typecheck:solution
pnpm validate
pnpm --filter @tokovo/episodes test
pnpm --filter video-runner typecheck
pnpm --filter docs build

Documentation

• apps/docs/app/page.mdx is the documentation home.
• llms.txt, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and .skills/tokovo-authoring/SKILL.md provide LLM and coding-agent context.
• apps/docs/app/showcase/page.mdx lists the current v1 showcase surface.
• apps/docs/app/getting-started/quickstart/page.mdx is the fastest render path.
• apps/docs/app/getting-started/first-episode/page.mdx explains the authoring shape.
• apps/docs/app/guides/object-storage-assets/page.mdx explains local and object-storage assets.
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md describes runtime boundaries.
• docs/V1_STABILITY.md defines the v1 readiness bar.
• docs/operations/release.md documents the release gate.
• docs/operations/public-release.md tracks public-release readiness.
• ASSET_LICENSES.md records bundled asset provenance.

Run the docs site locally:

pnpm --filter docs dev

V1 Readiness

The public v1 bar is intentionally strict:

• app simulators must own their reducers, views, anchors, and DSL helpers
• episodes must validate before they are rendered
• multi-device episodes should author device focus intentionally
• camera targets should resolve to semantic anchors instead of fallback boxes
• audio cues, generated sounds, voice tracks, and backgrounds should be declared as episode data
• docs assets must be intentional, licensed, and listed in ASSET_LICENSES.md
• generated renders stay out of git unless they are part of the docs showcase

Contributing

Start with CONTRIBUTING.md, keep changes scoped, and run the relevant checks before opening a pull request.

For security issues, follow SECURITY.md instead of opening a public issue.

License

Tokovo is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.