@corerus/chorus-cli

The cwi command: scaffold apps, analyze media into caption manifests, assign accessible colours, validate, preview and export.

npm install -g @corerus/chorus-cli
cwi --help

Start here

chorus init my-captions          # scaffold a runnable Vite app
chorus preview captions.cwi.json --video scene.mp4

preview needs no scaffolding and no build step. It serves a player with the cast list, live validation and a colour-vision simulator, using the packages' own ESM over an import map — so you preview the published renderer rather than a copy of it.

Commands

chorus init [dir]                      scaffold a runnable app
chorus preview <manifest> [--video f]  open a player for any manifest
chorus analyze <media> --vtt f         media + captions -> manifest
chorus scene <spec.json> --out f       multi-speaker scene from provider renders
chorus assign <manifest>               assign character colours (CVD-safe)
chorus validate <manifest>             structural + accessibility audit
chorus stats <manifest>                per-character screen time
chorus export <manifest> --format vtt  emit a delivery format (vtt | ass)
chorus palette                         audit the spec's own palette
chorus type --db 6 --f0 110            what typography an acoustic reading yields

Every command takes --json. validate exits non-zero on errors, so it drops straight into CI.

Requirements

analyze and scene need Python 3 with numpy and ffmpeg on PATH; the Python pipeline ships inside this package. Set CWI_PYTHON to point at a specific interpreter. Everything else is pure Node.

Exports are lossy by necessity and print exactly what they dropped — WebVTT keeps no typography at all, and ASS cannot carry variable-font axes, so the whole intonation layer is lost there. Never present a lossy export as full CWI support.

About the design system

This package implements the Caption with Intention design system (V1.0, 2025.1), created by FCB Chicago with the Chicago Hearing Society. This toolchain is MIT; the design system is not this project's to license. Its specification PDF is marked All Rights Reserved and the system is marked ©, despite widespread "open source" framing in press coverage — there is no licence file or repository anywhere upstream. Seek written clarification from [email protected] before commercial deployment.

Roboto Flex, which the system requires, is separately available under the SIL Open Font License.