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Create narrated faceless story shorts with Claude Opus and Shotstack

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Created by: Jesus Rojas || jesus-shotstack
Jesus Rojas

Last update

Last update 2 days ago

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Quick overview

Paste a story in, get a 60-second vertical Short out: a post-style title card, six AI pictures that follow the story, a narrator, big word-by-word captions and music. Made for story channels on TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts. Self-hosted n8n only.

How it works

  1. Downloads Shotstack's guide for AI agents once, then makes one video for each story in Your stories.
  2. Claude Opus 5.5 trims the story to a minute and writes the whole Shotstack edit: the title card, 6 Nano Banana 2 pictures in story order, an ElevenLabs narration, word-by-word captions and a track from Shotstack's music library.
  3. A Code step checks the edit before anything costs money. It fixes small things itself and sends anything else back to Claude.
  4. One Shotstack render generates the pictures and the narration and renders the Short, saved to the stories folder. If Shotstack turns the edit down or the render fails, Claude fixes it, up to twice.

Setup

  1. Install the Shotstack community node from the nodes panel or Settings → Community nodes, then import this workflow.
  2. Add your Anthropic API key to Claude and Claude (fixes), and your Shotstack API key to Make the video and Check the render. Free trial: https://shotstack.io/?utm_source=n8n&utm_medium=template&utm_campaign=story-shorts&utm_content=description
  3. Paste your stories in Your stories: the title on the first line, then the story, with a line of --- between stories. Use stories you wrote or have permission to use.
  4. Make an empty stories folder in n8n's files folder (/home/node/.n8n-files in Docker).
  5. Click Execute workflow. Each Short takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Requirements

  • Self-hosted n8n, version 2 or later, because the workflow saves files on disk
  • The Shotstack community node, any version
  • An Anthropic API key. Claude Opus 5.5 works best
  • A Shotstack API key with credits for AI generation. The free trial's 10 credits cover two Shorts

Customization

  • Read stories from Google Sheets, Notion or a form instead of pasting them
  • Change the length, the picture style or the captions in the brief in Claude makes the video
  • Upload the Shorts to YouTube or TikTok instead of saving them on disk

Additional info

Each Short costs about 4 Shotstack credits: 3 for the 6 pictures and under 1 for the narration and the render, plus your Claude usage.