Gaanim for VS Code

Write Gaanim videos and slides in VS Code. The extension drives the gaanim command: it creates projects, keeps the live preview on the line you are editing, puts problems on their lines, exports, presents, and keeps the narration script beside the code. It brings everything gaanim.nvim does to VS Code, and uses Gaanim 0.13's editor channel (--listen), JSON messages and gaanim inspect.

What it does

• Times in the code. The time of each play, stop, segment, marker and voiceover at the end of its line (▤ 0:00.0–0:01.0 · 1.0s, ⏸ 0:01.3), from the timeline Gaanim reports. An open preview sends it with every reload, so nothing runs twice; without one, gaanim inspect runs after a save. The status bar shows the cursor's instant.
• Lenses over each slide: ▶ Preview, ⟲ Loop (or Unloop while it loops), Still, how long its script takes to say against its target= (≈0:42 / 1:00, or Write script) and its time range; over each voiceover, whether its take is recorded and how long it is.
• Hovers: what a line makes on the timeline; the size, pixels or length of an asset file; where a vo.wait_until("word") lands in its take.
• Code actions: write a slide's missing script, name an unnamed stop, add a marker, preview the line, export its frame or its slide as a draft.
• Outline and breadcrumbs: slides with their stops, markers and voiceovers as document symbols. Next/Previous Slide and Stop move the cursor between them; Go to Slide, Stop or Marker… and Go to Timeline Entry… jump across the project and move the preview there.
• Completion of asset names inside media.image("…"), svg, audio, video… and of Typst math inside equation(...) strings and $…$: every codex 0.3.0 symbol with the character it draws (α alpha, ⇒ arrow.r.double, . for variants), math functions as snippets, accents, operators and spaces.
• Problems on their lines. Saving runs gaanim check in the background; a failed reload puts the Python error on its line. Asset names that resolve to no file get a warning.
• The preview, driven from the code. Where the preview rests is marked in the code; while it plays, the lines whose play animates are highlighted. Gaanim's own Open in the editor (inspector, console, animation timeline, error panel, Open and complete) opens the line in this window.
• Narration script. The script beside the code follows the slide under the cursor, or the slide the preview shows while you present. Go Between Slide and Its Script jumps both ways and adds a missing section with a [stop] mark per stop. Each section shows how long it takes to say against its slide's target= (green, amber, red), and the title the whole talk against scene.slides.target().
• Exports with a cancellable progress bar in percent: MP4, draft, production, WebM, MOV, GIF, WebP, PDF, PDF with notes, .gaanim bundle, a bundle made lighter for the web (gaanim pack --web), and stills.
• Nudging numbers (Ctrl+Alt+A / Ctrl+Alt+X): 0.8 → 0.9, 0.25 → 0.26; with live mode each nudge shows in the preview.
• Docs of the installed Gaanim: Search Documentation… and Open API Entry at Cursor read the docs bundled with the project's .venv, so they match its version.
• Python completion: points the Python extension at the project's .venv, where gaanim init installed the authoring package and its stubs.
• Snippets: gslides, gvideo, gseg, gstop, gplay, gvo, gmark, gwait in Python; gsec, gstop, gnote in Markdown.
• Check Setup reports gaanim and what it supports, FFmpeg, uv, the Python extension, the project's .venv, docs and script.

Beyond gaanim.nvim

• Gaanim side bar: the project's real timeline as a tree (times, stops, markers, voiceovers; click to go there and move the preview, with Preview, Loop, Still, Export and Script on each entry), and your projects.
• Preview Timeline panel: the scene to scale (slides, stops, markers, voiceovers, the loop and the playhead) with play, loop, follow, live and still buttons. Click to move the preview, Alt+click to loop a slide, double-click to open its code.
• Take inspector: each vo.wait_until("…") and vo.until("…") is resolved the way Gaanim does (tapped mark, transcript, proportional place in the script); a word that lands nowhere gets a warning, and one that falls back to the script's proportion an information.
• Script to code: Add the Script's Missing Slides to the Code writes the segment (slides) or voiceover (video) calls that the script's ## sections ask for, with a stop per [stop] mark.
• Present… asks where to start, how long the talk lasts and which monitor to use; stills open beside the code.
• File paths reach the preview the way Python spells them, so following the cursor works on Windows whatever the drive letter's case.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.90 or newer (or Cursor, VSCodium).
• gaanim on PATH, or gaanim.path set. Gaanim 0.13 has everything; older versions work with less (see below).
• The Python extension (with Pylance or basedpyright) for completion of the Gaanim API.

The extension reads gaanim --help once and uses what the installed version offers. Driving the preview (Preview at Cursor without a restart, Follow, Loop, Move Preview To…, the playhead) needs --listen; exact problem lines and export percent need --message-format json; times in the code and the timeline need inspect; stills and ranges by slide name need export to take names. Without them Preview at Cursor restarts the preview from the cursor's slide and the rest reads the CLI's text.

Keys

All under Ctrl+Alt+G (Cmd+Alt+G on macOS), in a Gaanim project:

Settings

gaanim.outline.patterns covers decks with one module per slide, such as NAME = "Cover" in each:

"gaanim.outline.patterns": [{ "kind": "segment", "pattern": "\\nNAME\\s*=\\s*\"([^\"]+)\"" }]

The timeline view needs none of this: it lists what the scene really made.

Develop

npm install
npm run build          # dist/extension.js
npm test               # unit tests of the parsers, without VS Code
npm run package        # gaanim-<version>.vsix

npm run test:integration runs test/integration/suite.ts inside VS Code against a stand-in gaanim; with GAANIM_TEST_BIN (a real gaanim) and GAANIM_TEST_PROJECT (a project from gaanim init) it drives the real one, whose preview needs a display and a GPU (Xvfb and Mesa's lavapipe work). scripts/gen_typst_symbols.py regenerates the Typst symbol table from codex.