orion-on-the-clock

01 // The problem

Your agents’ day lives in session logs and merged PRs that nobody outside your terminal sees. Turning it into a public video every morning means turning private logs into public words with nobody watching, where it is easy to ship something you did not mean to: a private repo name, a secret, a quote the agent never wrote, a number nobody counted.

Every morning a timer runs seven stages, from agent logs to a verified upload. The writer sees only an allowlisted ledger, fourteen fail-closed checks gate its script, your cloned voice reads it, HyperFrames renders a 9:16 Short, and a Studio driver uploads it in your own signed-in Chrome: private by default, public only when you flip a switch.

02 // How it works

One command, python3 -m daily.run, runs the stages in order, records each in status.json, resumes where a run stopped, and holds a lock so two runs never overlap. Every stage after the gate reads the script only through the gate’s verdict.

1. 1. collectReads one calendar day of Claude Code and Codex session logs, the PRs merged on GitHub and any sources you plug in, then writes the ledger: the allowed items, quote candidates and counts, and nothing else.
2. 2. writeSends the ledger to one headless claude -p call with tools, settings and MCP servers off, and gets back a structured script: cold open, scoreboard, story, steal this, an optional agent confessional and the out.
3. 3. gateRuns fourteen fail-closed checks on the script and writes a verdict bound to the script and the ledger, so text edited after the gate is never voiced, rendered or uploaded.
4. 4. voiceYour cloned voice (Chatterbox, from a reference recording you supply) reads the host lines, the agent’s built-in voice reads its quote, and faster-whisper times every word.
5. 5. renderFills a HyperFrames composition (scoreboard, story cards, the confessional card, karaoke captions), mixes the sound to -14 LUFS, renders the 9:16 video and writes a verdict of five checks.
6. 6. publishRe-checks both verdicts against each other and uploads the exact rendered bytes through YouTube Studio in your own signed-in Chrome: private by default, read back and verified either way.
7. 7. notifySends one item per day and outcome (ready for review, published, quiet, stopped, needs you) to a command you choose, or writes it to the state folder.

03 // Quickstart

Start with the text half: it is standard library only, and a dry run works in its own folder without touching the real day’s. Then read ledger.json (what the writer was allowed to see), script.json (what it wrote) and verdict.json (each gate check with its evidence).

git clone https://github.com/OrionArchitekton/orion-on-the-clock-oss
cd orion-on-the-clock-oss
python3 -m pip install -e '.[dev]'
python3 -m pytest -q

mkdir -p ~/.config/orion-on-the-clock
cp config.example/* ~/.config/orion-on-the-clock/
# edit settings.toml (time zone, show names, your GitHub owner)
# and lanes.json (which repos may appear)

python3 -m daily.run --day yesterday --until gate --dry

# set render.kit in settings.toml and fill in voices.json first
python3 -m daily.run --day yesterday --from-stage voice --dry

python3 release/studio.py preflight   # proves the browser reaches your Studio
python3 -m daily.run --day yesterday  # a private upload and one item

The media and release halves also need ffmpeg, Node with HyperFrames, Chatterbox, faster-whisper, Chrome and agent-browser. Nothing is bundled: bring your own media kit and voice reference recording. The README lists the versions it was built with, and the runbook covers the timer.

04 // Safety design

05 // What it costs to run

Money

Your Claude Code plan covers the writer, and each call is capped by writer.budget_usd (default 2 USD, at most two attempts a day). One pilot day of the original pipeline (two writer attempts) came to about 0.21 USD of notional usage. Everything else is open source and runs on your machine; YouTube uploads are free.

Time

Collect, write and gate take a minute or two. Voicing takes a few minutes with a GPU and about an hour on a CPU; Whisper and the render add a few minutes more, and the upload and its checks a few more.

Attention

In private mode, one look and one tap a day in YouTube Studio, plus whatever a stop asks of you. The runbook lists every needs-you code and what it means.