pod docs

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, and double-click it. If Windows SmartScreen shows a warning, click More info → Run anyway — the app is unsigned, not unsafe.

Note: The full walkthroughs — including Intel Macs, older 32-bit Windows machines — and Linux, where the Mac one-liner works as-is — live on the Mac install and Windows install pages.

The very first run downloads pod's 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 — 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 — 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 — pod's makers never store your footage or scripts.
Tip: Front-load your brief and you'll skip most of the questions: "90-second telugu teaser, vertical, moody, protect the ending" tells pod almost everything in one line. More craft like this on talking pod's language.

Good to know from day one

Next: a full first film, gate by gate · steer, assisted, autopilot · every command.