Case studies

Retiring the ffmpeg script, one solved problem at a time

Some video problems are solved. Netflix solved them. YouTube solved them. Plex, Jellyfin, Roku — all solved them. And under many of those solutions sits the same thing: ffmpeg and a script. Teams write APIs over the script, GUIs over the API — the script never goes away. Someone maintains it, forever, at every company, separately.

m0saic doesn’t hide that it’s ffmpeg. It is ffmpeg in a script — but the abstraction sits high enough that it becomes a programming language. A template is a program that solves the class of problem, in one inspectable format. Write it once, and everyone who picks it up gets the same solved solution — with a visual layer, a prose layer, validation, and batch built in.

This page collects these real-world case studies.

Contest Rate Recap — the template that shipped on 2026-10-25, day 036

a living case studyOne a Day

An agent ships one template a day, in public. Nobody reviews it but the gate.

days: 36
shipped: 36
latest: 2026-10-25 · Contest Rate Recap · claude / claude-fable-5-1

Counted from the repo's journal, refreshed hourly. Every day leaves a record, including the ones that shipped nothing.

Read the case study →Watch it work on GitHub ↗

Solid cards are written. Dashed cards, marked Not written yet, are case studies still being written — their templates already ship.

A player scrub mock with a filmstrip of Big Buck Bunny seek thumbnails

CASE 01TrickplayThe scrub-preview thumbnails every video platform ships — sprite sheets, WebVTT storyboard, player manifests. Solved everywhere, maintained everywhere. Now once.sprite sheetsWebVTTJellyfin + DASHbatch

A contact sheet of Big Buck Bunny — ffprobe info pane above a 4×4 grid of timestamped frames

CASE 02Preview SheetsOne image that shows a whole video: an ffprobe info pane over a timestamped grid of exact-seek frames. Point it at a folder, get a sheet per title — landscape and portrait from one render.contact sheetsexact seeksinfo paneboth orientations

A drama still with Spanish subtitles above dimmed English subtitles

CASE 03Dual-Language SubtitlesTarget language on top, native beneath — with a support dial that delays, dims, and eventually drops the training wheels. Built because the founder is learning Spanish from a real show.dual subslearning dialexternal SRTMKV tracks

The m0saic M over a dark field, carrying an invisible forensic watermark

CASE 04Forensic WatermarkAn invisible, error-corrected payload woven into the frames — it survives platform re-encodes, and a verify template renders the PASS/FAIL report card with the recovered payload.invisible payloadsurvives re-encodeverify reportprovenance

An animated dashboard sequence of a repository's weekly activity

CASE 05Repo PulseLive GitHub data in, an animated weekly report out: commits, contributors, activity trend, notable changes — eight beats cross-faded into one deliverable you can cron.live dataGitHubdashboard beatscron-able

A webpage's skeleton loading state — gray blocks shimmering where the real content sits

CASE 06Page SkeletonsCaptured page geometry becomes a skeleton still or a looping shimmer video — loading-state mockups that cannot drift from the actual layout, because they are the actual layout.skeleton screensshimmer loopreal geometrymockups

Day 001's template, an Open Graph card: a dark card with a kicker, a two-line title, a summary and an accent band carrying the site and author

CASE 07One a DayEvery day an AI agent scouts the web for a media chore, builds a m0saic template with variants, critiques them, and a deterministic gate ships one. Each template explains itself — the problem, the sources, how it was made, what it cost. Add the repo to Mosaic Desktop and use them.agentic loopwhy-tutoriallayout contractthird-party repo

Not written yet

CASE 08The Agent Writes story.jsonAgentic pipelines — deterministic video as a build artifact. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.narrated chapterscaptionscontent-addressed cacheagents

Not written yet

CASE 09Photo CollagePhotography — solver-designed contact sheets and collages. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.layout solvercollage

Not written yet

CASE 10Code MorphDev content — code-explainer videos without screen recording. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.code videomorphs

Not written yet

A dark lyric-video frame with one line lit in karaoke highlight

CASE 11Lyric VideoMusicians + creators — a karaoke-ready lyric video from pasted lyrics. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.lyricskaraoketap-to-timemusic

Not written yet

An October content calendar with teaser art in the drop days and a facecam beside it

CASE 12Drop CalendarYouTubers, streamers, musicians — a month of drops for a channel. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.content calendarplatform-awareteasersfacecam

Not written yet

A stick-figure streamer in headphones waving at their desk, with a purple tip-goal bar pinned top-left

CASE 13Tip GoalStreamers — a donation-goal bar that is a real render, not a browser source. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.stream overlaydonation barkeyframes

Not written yet

A six-panel scientific figure with lettered panels and a caption rail

CASE 14Multi-Panel FigureResearchers — the journal figure, reproducible to the byte. The template ships today; the write-up is still to come.figurepanelslossless PNGreproducible

NEXTEvery ffmpeg script somebody maintains is a candidate.