0001. The file is the video

Corrected in part by 0013: Remotion has an editor now.

Context

Three parties work on the same edit: a model that writes it, a person who adjusts it in a timeline, and a renderer that plays it. Every editor on the market keeps a project document (JSON, a database, an object graph) and treats code, if it has any, as an export. Every code-based renderer (Remotion) has no editor. The model is the author we care about most, and it is good at writing code and bad at writing bespoke documents.

Decision

One TSX file is the edit. It exports schema (the tweakable inputs), defaults and a default component that returns a <Composition>. The resolver reads the file; the editor edits the file; the renderer plays the file. There is no project document beside it.

Consequences

• The model's medium and the user's artifact are the same thing, so neither has to be synchronised with the other.
• The editor needs tooling that most editors do not: a source index, a fold that writes a gesture back as a small edit, a lint for the conventions that keep the file editable (see 0002, 0003).
• The preview is built from the file by a build step; the UI never compiles.

Alternatives

A JSON project with code export (OpenReel, every NLE): the model would write a format it does not know, and helpers, loops and computed values would have no home. Code with a parallel document for edits: two sources of truth, and the model's next turn would not see the user's changes unless the document is re-serialised into something it can edit, which is the same problem with an extra step.