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Your first render

Five commands, start to finish. Nothing here needs a model.

1. Take a starter​

Starters are contract-tested scene skeletons. Every one must compile with zero errors and zero warnings against the neutral brand or the build fails — so the floor is guaranteed before your copy lands in it.

cleya starters                                   # list them, and when to use each
cleya starters --name promo-hero --copy-to ./promo

That writes promo-hero.scene.json and a neutral starter-brand.json into ./promo.

2. Validate before you render​

cleya render --scene promo/promo-hero.scene.json --brand promo/starter-brand.json --check

--check compiles and validates the spec without drawing a frame — about 50 milliseconds. It reports structural errors and warns about dead air (stretches where nothing moves).

3. Render​

cleya render --scene promo/promo-hero.scene.json \
  --brand promo/starter-brand.json \
  --output promo.mp4

Iterate cheaply while you work:

  • --at 3.2 renders a single PNG frame at that time
  • --preview writes a labelled contact sheet of six frames

Both are how an agent "watches" a video without watching it.

4. Measure what came out​

cleya contrast    --input promo.mp4 --time 3.2
cleya align       --input promo.mp4 --time 3.2
cleya brand_check --input promo.mp4 --time 3.2 --brand promo/starter-brand.json

These read the rendered pixels — not the spec. contrast OCRs each text box and splits strokes from ground before measuring, align flags edges and centres that are almost aligned, and brand_check scores dominant colours against the brand palette by ΔE.

5. Correct, deterministically​

cleya edit --scene promo/promo-hero.scene.json \
  --op '{"op":"center","layer":"headline"}' --verify

edit validates before it writes, so an edit can never leave a broken scene. --verify probe-renders the result and re-runs the instruments, so the change arrives measured.

Layer ids differ per starter — cleya starters --name promo-hero lists them along with the knobs worth turning.

The shortcut​

Once you know which starter you want, draft collapses steps 1–4 into one call:

cleya draft --starter promo-hero --brand brand.json \
  --copy '{"headline":"Ship it {accent:Friday}","tagline":"in one command","stat":42}' \
  --output draft.mp4

It renders, then returns contrast and brand readings beside the file. See Instant drafts.