Framefields: code-first video for agents that renders on the GPU, with no headless Chrome

HyperFrames, Remotion and most Opus 5.5 film repos share one design: build a web page, then have headless Chrome capture it frame by frame. Framefields (Apache-2.0, beta) drops the browser. It's a single npm package that renders through Dawn/WebGPU on Metal, Vulkan or D3D12, and its pitch is that one TypeScript API covers what you'd normally split across Photoshop-style compositing, After Effects-style motion type and Blender-style 3D. The repo has about 470 stars (GitHub API, Oct 21). Version 2.4.0 landed on npm on Oct 21, and curators @RepoGems (Oct 18) and @DanKornas (Oct 21) both picked it up.

How it looks in code: create a Composition (say 1920×1080, 60 fps, 180 frames), build layers with Layer.box, Layer.flex and Layer.text, attach a LayerAnimation with GSAP-style eases like back.out(1.5), then call renderVideo() for an MP4. Timing uses discrete sample points and absolute frame clocks instead of timers, so there's no drift, and audio is laid out on frame-accurate BeatGrids. The documented feature list: vector text with range animators and typewriter cadence, 50+ WGSL shaders (3D LUTs, curves, film grain, glass, blur), 3D scenes with PBR materials, shadows and glTF/GLB models, procedural whooshes and impacts with audio-reactive signals, on-device ONNX models for tracking, pose and subject cutouts, and a localhost preview player with scrubbing and a waveform timeline.

Agent setup: /plugin install framefields in Claude Code, or npx skills add gatewai-dev/framefields for Cursor, Codex, Copilot and others. It needs Node 22+. The agent loop it's designed around is write TypeScript, inspect a rendered frame grid, fix, export. That's the same contact-sheet review idea we keep recommending, minus the browser. The examples folder has the source for each showcase film (a physics dancer, a Mac keyboard built from 3D primitives, the launch film).

Two caveats. It's beta and young: the repo was created Oct 2, and nearly all commits come from one maintainer. There's also an optional paid AI gateway (FRAMEFIELDS_API_KEY) that calls hosted image, video, music and voice models. The README suggests generating assets once, saving them locally and tracking them with Git LFS so previews don't re-bill. You don't need it for code-only motion work. Worth a test if Chromium capture speed or flaky BeginFrame renders have been your bottleneck. Spotted, not tested. Credit Gatewai and the curators who surfaced it.