Quickstart: your first film in 5 minutes

From an empty computer to a finished AI-made short film: install pod, enter your keys once, and describe the film you want in plain words.

pod is a tiny AI film studio that lives on your own computer. You talk to it like you'd talk to a production team ("make a 30-second teaser for my thriller, telugu, moody"), and a crew of specialized AIs writes, casts, designs, shoots, quality-checks and edits the film for you. This page walks you through the whole thing once, start to finish.

Step 1: Install pod

On a Mac

You'll use the Terminal, a plain window where you type instructions and press Enter to run them. Don't worry, you only need it to type pod.

1. Press Cmd+Space, type Terminal, press Enter.
2. Paste this line and press Enter:

❯ curl -fsSL https://lic.brainpuddle.com/install.sh | sh

The installer detects your Mac (Apple Silicon or Intel) automatically. When it finishes, type pod and press Enter. If the Terminal says "command not found", just close the Terminal window, open a new one, and try pod again.

On Windows

Download the Windows app, rename the file to pod.exe, move it out of Downloads into Documents (your films are saved right next to it), and double-click it. The first time, Windows SmartScreen shows a blue "Windows protected your PC" screen. Click More info → Run anyway. It appears because the app hasn't bought a Microsoft signing certificate and your browser stamped the file as downloaded from the internet: unsigned, not unsafe, and you only do it once.

From the version after 2.9.11, the download we'll recommend instead is a zip: the folder version. Right-click it → Extract All → extract into Documents → open the pod folder → double-click pod.exe. Same studio, and Windows Defender stops mistaking the packaging for something suspicious. If the link isn't live yet, it hasn't shipped, so use the single file above. Both paths, and the Defender story, are on the Windows install page.

You don't install anything else: no ffmpeg, no Node, no config file to write. The very first run downloads pod's own toolchain, a video engine and a local graphics renderer, about 250 MB, one time only. You'll see the progress live.

Step 2: The 3-key wizard

On first run, pod asks for up to three things. It's a friendly wizard, and you can re-run it any time with pod login:

1. Your pod license key (it looks like pod_sk_…), from whoever gave you pod.
2. Your KIE key, from kie.ai/api-key. This is important to understand: this is the account that pays for the actual AI image and video generation. It's your own account with your own balance, and topping up about $5 is plenty to start. If you're on a managed studio account, skip this entirely: generation is included, and you enter only the license key.
3. An ElevenLabs key, optional, for voice-over. Press Enter to skip it.

Keys are saved to a private file in your home folder. That's the whole setup, with nothing else to configure. (More detail on keys and both account types: Setting up your keys.)

Step 3: Prove it works, for free

Type pod to enter the studio, then type demo:

❯ demo
  (renders a free 5-second clip on your own machine — no credits, no internet generation)

If the demo clip plays, your studio is fully working. If anything ever looks off later, doctor re-checks the whole setup and renders two free local test clips.

Step 4: Make your first film

Inside the studio you'll see a bordered input box with a ❯. Just talk to it. Try:

❯ make a 30-second explainer on why the sky is blue
  (the front desk turns your words into the exact command and shows it first)
produce "why the sky is blue — explainer" --duration 30
  (Enter = run it · e = edit it · n = never mind)

That's the pattern for everything: describe what you want in any language, pod shows you what it's about to do, and nothing happens until you press Enter.

What happens next

pod never surprises you. Here's the shape of a production:

1. Upfront questions, once. Before anything starts, pod asks for the blanks it needs: duration, language, the look, dialogue style, the shape (16:9 wide, 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square). It only asks what you haven't already said, then lists what it would assume for anything left open and waits for your explicit OK. Nothing renders until you say go.
2. Gates. In the default mode (called steer), you are the quality control: pod stops at every gate (the script, the cast & look, the shot plan, the keyframes, each scene's clips, the final cut), shows its work, and waits. At any gate, Enter approves, plain words request changes ("make the ending happier"), and a bare "no" never spends money. See the gates and the three modes for the full tour.
3. The cost gate. Before any footage renders, pod shows you the exact credit estimate and waits. y = go, d = a cheap 480p drafts-only pass (master it later with finalize), N = stop, free, with the plan saved for later. Video is what costs money; stills are cheap. More on this in money & credits.
4. Your film lands in the episodes folder. Everything saves under episodes/<name>/ on your own computer, with the finished MP4 in 07-final/. That's the only copy, and pod's makers never store your footage or scripts.

Good to know from day one

• Ctrl+C cancels a running job but never kicks you out of the studio. Progress is checkpointed, and resume continues from the exact spot. Approved work is never redone, and pod never pays twice for the same take.
• Type help any time; exit leaves the studio. Tab completes command words and your episode names.
• You can hand over a full screenplay, a PDF, even your own images. See your first film, in depth and using your own media.
• Not sure what to make? Type explore "ideas for a coffee brand ad" and pod pitches 4–5 distinct concepts to pick from.

Next: a full first film, gate by gate · the modes · every command.