Files and configuration

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
OPENAI_API_KEY	Required for processing	OpenAI API authentication
SHORTS_VISION_MODEL	gpt-4o-mini	Sampled visual analysis
SHORTS_EDITOR_MODEL	gpt-4o-mini	Clip selection and editorial reasoning
SHORTS_TRANSCRIPTION_MODEL	whisper-1	Transcription with measured word timestamps
SHORTS_DATA_DIR	./data	Local job storage

Keep credentials in your environment or local .env; never add them to documentation or Git. Model replacements must preserve the workflow's required timestamp and structured-output capabilities.

Job artifacts

Each job is stored under data/jobs/JOB_ID/.

Path	Contents
source.mp4	Normalized working source
timeline.json	Common source origin and timeline mapping
transcript.json	Measured transcription
scenes.json, selection.json	Analysis and selected moments
manifest.json	Accepted and uncertain outputs
cache/, frames/	Cached responses and sampled frames
drafts/	Uncertain renders
accepted/clip-NN/	Accepted clip package

An accepted package contains video.mp4, captions.srt, captions.ass, words.json, edl.json and review.json. Word data preserves both source and output timestamps. Keep the normalized source in place when an editor project references it.

Raw media, generated artifacts, installed editor runtimes and local credentials are ignored by Git.