Agents

Which agents drive a CoAnimator project, what they actually do, and how to point your own at it.

CoAnimator is agent-native rather than tied to one vendor. It integrates through skills, so any agent you already use can drive the studio.

Supported agents

Bring your own agent, or just sign in. Choose your agent lists the accounts you can sign into first, then the agents already installed on your computer. Pick one and it opens as a chat tab, using the sign-in that agent already has. The exception is Antigravity, which opens in a terminal tab.

Agent	Vendor	Sign-in
Claude	Anthropic	Use installed Claude Code, download an app-managed copy, or use a separately billed API key
Claude Code CLI	Anthropic	Reuse your installed Claude Code and its account
Codex CLI	OpenAI	Reuses your `codex` CLI sign-in
Chat: ChatGPT · Grok	CoAnimator	Supported account; no vendor CLI required
Grok Build CLI	xAI	Your Grok account
Antigravity CLI	Google	Google sign-in, terminal tab only

CoAnimator works especially well with Claude and Codex. In Chat, ChatGPT and Grok use your supported account without installing a vendor CLI. For Claude, reuse an installation, let CoAnimator download Claude Code, or use an Anthropic API key. OpenCode is hidden from new-agent selection.

Billing and sign-in follow the selected connection. Managed Claude runs official Claude Code with its own sign-in; the Anthropic API route uses CoAnimator's agent and separate API billing. OpenAI, Google and xAI API-key setup routes are not offered.

You do not have to bring an agent at all. Driving the editor by hand works; the agent is the faster path.

What the agent actually does

An agent does more than cut scenes together: it researches your product, drafts the script, and explains its work as it goes. Creating videos walks through that sequence, and Skills covers how it learns a format's rules.

Chat and CLI Agents

Choose Chat to connect Claude, ChatGPT or Grok in CoAnimator. Choose CLI Agents to use an installed coding agent and its existing setup.

Category	What you get	Setup
Chat	Claude, ChatGPT or Grok in CoAnimator's chat interface	Sign in to a supported account. Claude can reuse an installation, download Claude Code for you, or connect with a separately billed Anthropic API key.
CLI Agents	Your installed coding agent, shown in a chat tab or its own terminal interface	Install and sign in to the agent. Some chat adapters also need Node/npm. Antigravity opens in a terminal.

ChatGPT, Grok and the Anthropic API connection use CoAnimator's own agent. The Claude account connection runs official Claude Code. Both appear in chat, but their runtime, account and billing setup differ.

CoAnimator's own agent offers Ask, Approve for me and Full access; read-only tools and remembered grants do not necessarily prompt. Claude Code and other native agents follow their session's permission settings. Terminal sessions use the vendor's interface, instructions and approvals.

Chat gateways

To drive CoAnimator from a chat app instead of a terminal, run the agent behind a gateway. Each platform has its own setup page, with the channels it serves nested inside. These are external integrations, not built-in CoAnimator chat channels. The gateway host needs CoAnimator, media tools and project access:

OpenClaw

A self-hosted gateway that connects one agent to many chat channels. Includes the Telegram setup.

Hermes

Nous Research's agent framework with a messaging gateway. Includes the Discord setup.

Custom agents

The table above is what ships in the picker, not the limit. Because the integration is a skill plus the coa CLI rather than a proprietary API, an agent that can read files and run shell commands has everything it needs: the project is ordinary files on disk, and rendering is one command.

Any agent that speaks ACP can join the picker. Add it to agent-custom.json in the app's data folder:

{
  "agents": [
    {
      "id": "mine",
      "label": "My agent",
      "command": "/path/to/bin",
      "args": ["acp"]
    }
  ]
}

It then appears alongside the built-in agents. So an in-house or self-hosted agent works on the same terms as a commercial one, with no key to register and nothing to ask us for.

How this compares to Remotion

Adjacent, but aimed at different people. Remotion is a React framework where developers program videos. CoAnimator is a desktop studio where agents author videos on a visual timeline, with local rendering built in. If you want a video product built in React, Remotion is great. If you want finished videos produced by agents with a human directing, that is CoAnimator.