Cosmic Tea: the series

The app already had twelve characters drawn by code, with every expression on-model. That is a cast. I wanted to see how much of a comedy series could run as a pipeline, and whether it could stay funny. Funny turned out to be the hard part, so most of the engineering went into judging the writing, not making the pictures.

• A regular cast from the app, twelve guides and twelve familiars, always on-model
• Episodes aimed at something people send to a friend: your Capricorn boss, the Libra you're dating
• One canon behind the app and the series, so a guide never contradicts themselves
• Scheduled to TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram with captions from a posting sheet

• A fresh reader judges each script without seeing the writer's reasoning, and scores it for funny, for how it stands cold, and for the astrology
• Characters come from the same vector rig as the app, driven by code, so a new expression is a change in one place
• Lip sync is timed to the recorded lines and checked, with music and effects written in code rather than licensed
• Canon, astrology-fact, last-frame and length checks run on every episode before it can be queued
• A daily task reads rising search phrases and tunes captions on queued posts, within written limits, and logs every change

• Nobody draws a frame, and the characters still look like themselves
• The rules for what goes out alone are written down: anything with a real person, a new voice or a judge warning waits for me
• Astrology claims get fact-checked by a real ephemeris engine

Started on 7 October 2026 and still running.

Since October 2026 · 245 commits

Rendering was the easy part. The hard part was comedy. A model grading its own joke always laughs, so I split the writer from the reader and made the reader work cold. Early episodes also taught me to check the last frame and the running time every time, because a video that passes every other test can still end on the wrong picture.

1. Build

   • Node.js
   • Vector character rig from the Cosmic Tea app
   • Music and effects written in code
   • astronomy-engineastrology fact checks

2. Voice and video

   • Headless Chromeframe rendering
   • ffmpeg
   • ElevenLabsvoices
   • Bufferscheduling