Caption styles

Map caption tone to named caption components, and prompt per-word emphasis for composed videos.

What caption styles do and when they trigger

Caption components are drop-in snippets that render animated on-screen text — one visual identity per component, animating per word or per line. Prompts trigger this layer when you ask for captions, subtitles, kinetic text, lyric-style words, or word-by-word titles inside a composition you’re building. Describe the energy of the captions and the agent picks matching typography, size, and animation; name a component to lock the look.

These components are for composed videos — captions you author into a HyperFrames composition. To add captions to an existing talking-head MP4, use the /embedded-captions workflow instead: it carries its own catalog of caption identities built around subject matting and occlusion (the caption sits behind the speaker), which the composition snippets below don’t do.

Tone → caption component

Tone	Components
Hype / high-energy social	caption-kinetic-slam, caption-highlight, caption-particle-burst, caption-emoji-pop
Clean / corporate	caption-clip-wipe, caption-weight-shift
Elegant / editorial	caption-editorial-emphasis, caption-gradient-fill, caption-weight-shift
Neon / nightlife / music	caption-neon-glow, caption-neon-accent
Tech / cyber / glitch	caption-glitch-rgb, caption-matrix-decode
Karaoke / lyric / follow-along	caption-pill-karaoke, caption-highlight
Textured / cinematic display type	caption-texture, texture-mask-text
Depth / 3D layering	caption-parallax-layers

Text-effect components

Three Text Effects components do one focused job rather than caption a whole track:

Component	Use when
caption-blend-difference	Text sits over busy or shifting footage and must stay legible — it auto-inverts per pixel against whatever is behind it.
morph-text	You want one spot to cycle through a short word list with a gooey morph (“fast / simple / yours”).
texture-mask-text	A large display word filled with a physical texture (brick, rock, wood, metal, lava).

Example prompts

/faceless-explainer 30-second vertical explainer. Add caption-highlight captions, TikTok-style — the visible line stays up, one word highlighted at a time.

Rendered from the prompt above, unedited.

Caption components ship as demos — a fixed word list, landscape sizing, an 8-second timeline. The agent re-authors the words and timings to your narration and re-sizes for your format; that’s expected, not a workaround. If you want one full-screen word at a time (no visible line), that’s caption-kinetic-slam, not caption-highlight.

Hype captions with caption-kinetic-slam: one full-screen word per beat, alternating slam-in direction.

Rendered from the prompt above with an authored 24-word line, unedited.

Neon music-video captions using caption-neon-glow. Make brand names larger with an accent color and highlight the numbers differently.

Rendered from the prompt above, unedited — the brand renders 1.4x in magenta, numbers in amber, distinct from the default cyan.

Fill the hero word “STONE” with texture-mask-text using the rock texture.

Knobs

• Tone picks typography, size, and animation — Hype (heavy, 72–96px, scale-pop) through Storytelling (serif, 44–56px, slow fade). See the caption-tone table in vocabulary.
• Per-word emphasis. “Make brand names larger with accent color,” “highlight numbers differently,” “add bounce to emotional keywords” all work — several components key off this: caption-editorial-emphasis drives a dramatic size contrast on emphasis words, caption-particle-burst fires on keywords, and the neon components carry keyword accent colors.
• Texture variable. caption-texture ships lava, marble, metal, wood, concrete, and rock — name the one you want.
• Word list. morph-text cycles an editable list; quote the words in order.
• Format. Full-screen single-word styles (caption-kinetic-slam) and TikTok-style highlights (caption-highlight) are built for vertical / social framing — say “vertical” or “9:16” so sizing and safe areas match.

Failure modes

Don’t stack a heavy effect on every word. Caption components already animate per word; layering another emphasis on top of that competes and turns illegible. Emphasize only the keywords.

• ❌ make every word explode with particles
• ✅ caption-particle-burst, firing only on the keywords

Don’t mix caption styles in one section. One identity per composition (or per section) reads as designed; two competing styles read as a mistake.

• ❌ use caption-neon-glow and caption-matrix-decode together
• ✅ pick one; switch styles only across a clear section break

Don’t reach for these on talking-head footage. These are composition snippets, not the matting/occlusion pipeline — captions won’t sit behind the speaker.

• ❌ /hyperframes add caption-highlight to my interview.mp4
• ✅ /embedded-captions (see captions and talking heads)

Don’t match a hype style to calm content. A high-energy caption on a corporate explainer fights the tone; let the tone table pick the identity.

• ❌ glitchy RGB captions (on a wellness brand piece)
• ✅ clean captions with caption-clip-wipe

Don’t invent caption names. Only the components in the Captions and Text Effects groups exist.

• ❌ add typewriter-bounce captions
• ✅ describe the tone (“tutorial, monospace, typewriter”) or name a real component