Screenwright

Subtitled tutorial videos, scripted. An MCP server that turns a list of steps into a narrated screen recording — by driving a real browser (Playwright) or an Android / Flutter emulator (adb). Captions are burned into the video and exported as an .srt.

The name is a play on Playwright (the engine under the hood) + screen.

steps[]  ──►  Playwright drives the browser  ──►  caption overlay synced per step
         ──►  video recorded  ──►  ffmpeg → .mp4  +  .srt sidecar

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✨ Features

• Scripted walkthroughs — goto, click, fill, type, press, hover, scroll, wait.
• Synced subtitles — attach a caption to any step; it's burned into the video and written to a timed .srt.
• Real voice-over (optional) — turn captions into a spoken narration with ElevenLabs or OpenAI TTS. Each line is pre-synthesized and the screen is held while it plays, so audio stays perfectly synced to the subtitles. Configure once via env.
• Self-contained output — bundled ffmpeg (via ffmpeg-static) produces a clean H.264 .mp4.
• Robust — per-action timeouts; mark a step optional so a missing selector doesn't abort the take.
• Web and mobile — Playwright for the web; adb screen-record + ffmpeg caption-burn for Android / Flutter apps (no app source needed).
• Use it from an AI (MCP tool) or straight from Node.

📦 Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• A Chromium build for Playwright: npx playwright install chromium (run automatically on npm install).

🚀 Install

# from GitHub
npm install -g github:0xjesus/screenwright

# or clone
git clone https://github.com/0xjesus/screenwright.git
cd screenwright && npm install

🔌 Use as an MCP server

Add it to your MCP client. Claude Desktop / Claude Code (claude_desktop_config.json or .mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "screenwright": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/screenwright/src/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

(If installed globally, you can use "command": "screenwright" with no args.)

Then just ask your assistant to record a tutorial — it calls the record_tutorial tool.

Tool: record_tutorial

Field	Type	Notes
output	string	Path to the output .mp4.
steps	step[]	Ordered steps (below).
baseUrl	string?	So goto steps can use relative paths.
viewport	{width,height}?	Default 1440×900.
headless	bool?	Default true.
channel	string?	e.g. "chrome" to use the system browser.
burnIn	bool?	Burn captions into the video. Default true.
srt	string?	Custom .srt path. Default <output>.captions.srt.
tts	object?	Voice-over — see 🎙️ Voice-over.
captionStyle	object?	{ position, fontSize, bg, color, maxWidth }.

Step = { caption?, narration?, action, url?, selector?, text?, key?, deltaY?, delayMs?, timeoutMs?, dwellMs?, optional? }. selector is any Playwright selector — CSS, text=…, xpath=…, or :has-text(…).

Tool: record_android_tutorial 📱

Same idea, for a Flutter / Android app on an emulator or device. Captions can't be injected into a native app, so the screen is recorded with adb screenrecord and the captions are burned in afterwards with ffmpeg (libass) from the synced .srt.

Requires: Android platform-tools (adb) + a running emulator/device (it must show in adb devices). For Flutter: flutter emulators --launch <id>, then run your app.

Field	Notes
output	Output .mp4.
steps	Ordered steps (below).
serial	adb -s serial when several devices are connected.
size	Recording size "WxH" (default: device resolution).
bitRate · srt · burnIn · adbPath · captionStyle	Optional.
tts	Voice-over — see 🎙️ Voice-over.

Step actions (coordinates are device pixels) — each may carry a caption and dwellMs:

• tap — { x, y }
• text — { text }
• swipe — { x1, y1, x2, y2, durationMs? }
• key — { key } (BACK, HOME, ENTER, MENU, APP_SWITCH, or a KEYCODE_*)
• launch — { package, activity? }
• wait — { dwellMs }

See examples/android-flutter.json. From Node: import { recordAndroidTutorial } from 'screenwright/android'.

🎙️ Voice-over (TTS)

Turn your captions into a real spoken narration — same tool, both drivers (web + Android). Provider and voice are set once via env (the same MCP config), so any record_* call with captions gets narrated automatically. Each line is synthesized before recording and the screen is held while it plays → the voice stays locked to the burned-in subtitles.

Configure in your MCP server env (or shell):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "screenwright": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/screenwright/src/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "SCREENWRIGHT_TTS_PROVIDER": "elevenlabs",
        "ELEVENLABS_API_KEY": "sk_...",
        "ELEVENLABS_VOICE_ID": "21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM",
        "ELEVENLABS_MODEL": "eleven_multilingual_v2"
      }
    }
  }
}

OpenAI instead: SCREENWRIGHT_TTS_PROVIDER=openai, OPENAI_API_KEY=..., OPENAI_TTS_VOICE=onyx, OPENAI_TTS_MODEL=gpt-4o-mini-tts.

Per-call override (wins over env), plus a narration field when the spoken line should differ from the on-screen caption:

await recordAndroidTutorial({
  output: 'out/tour.mp4',
  tts: { provider: 'elevenlabs', voiceId: '…', speed: 1.0, stability: 0.5 },
  steps: [
    { action: 'launch', package: 'com.acme.app', caption: 'Meet Acme', narration: 'This is Acme — your market copilot.', dwellMs: 1500 },
    { action: 'tap', x: 540, y: 1925, caption: 'Generate a signal', dwellMs: 1000 },
  ],
});
// → { mp4, srt, durationMs, steps, captions, narration: { provider, lines } }

• tts fields: provider (elevenlabs|openai), apiKey?, voiceId?/voice?, model?, speed?, stability?, similarityBoost?, style?, tailPadMs? (silence after each line, default 450).
• Requires the bundled ffmpeg (already a dependency) to mix + mux the audio. Multilingual voices (e.g. eleven_multilingual_v2) narrate Spanish/English captions cleanly.
• No tts and no env provider → silent captions, exactly as before.

🧪 Use from Node (no MCP)

node scripts/run-example.js                 # records examples/demo.json
node scripts/run-example.js examples/capleton.json

import { recordTutorial } from 'screenwright/recorder';

await recordTutorial({
  output: 'out/tour.mp4',
  baseUrl: 'https://playwright.dev',
  steps: [
    { action: 'goto', url: '/', caption: 'Welcome to the tour 🎬', dwellMs: 2600 },
    { action: 'scroll', deltaY: 600, caption: 'Each step can carry a synced subtitle…', dwellMs: 2400 },
    { action: 'goto', url: '/docs/intro', caption: '…burned into the video and exported as .srt', dwellMs: 3000 },
  ],
});
// → { mp4, srt, durationMs, steps, captions }

💡 Tips

• Don't double your subtitles. The .mp4 already has burned-in captions. Players like VLC auto-load an .srt that shares the video's name and draw it on top. Screenwright defaults the sidecar to *.captions.srt (a non-matching name) so that doesn't happen — keep it that way, or disable the subtitle track in your player. Want selectable-only subs? Pass burnIn: false for a clean video + the .srt.
• Black video in VLC on Linux? That's a GPU/output glitch, not the file. Launch with vlc --avcodec-hw=none --vout=xcb_x11, or set those in VLC → Preferences.
• Headless still records — no display needed.

📝 License

MIT © 0xjesus