Self-Hosted n8n AI Video Show Workflow: Claude + Shotstack

Self-Hosted n8n “AI Video Show” Workflow: Claude + Shotstack

Turn n8n into your own AI video show studio: Claude writes each episode, Shotstack places a consistent AI host into new scenes, lip-syncs the dialogue, and adds captions—while your self-hosted n8n setup saves all renders and files to disk.

What this workflow does

• Maintains show continuity: Your show settings store the show name, topic, host, voice, and camera style, plus the episode plan (including how many episodes to generate per run).
• Creates and preserves a consistent host: On the first run, the workflow uses an n8n Data Table to log episodes and save the host’s picture. This keeps the host identical across episodes and ensures episode numbering continues.
• Generates the host image once: If no picture exists yet, “Draw the host” creates it a single time using Nano Banana 2. You can also paste a link to your own character instead.
• Writes episodes with Claude: For each new episode, Claude produces a fresh idea not covered earlier, a title, the scene description, and a sequence of ~10-second shots (one line per take) with about 20 spoken words per shot and movement guidance.
• Renders one Shotstack video per episode: Nano Banana 2 Edit places the host into the scene. Gemini Omni Flash generates lip-synced talking takes per shot, plays them back-to-back, and generates captions in a fixed podcast-style layout. If an AI step fails, the render is retried once.

Use cases

• Operators running an AI content pipeline inside their own infrastructure (self-hosted n8n).
• Automation engineers building a repeatable episode generation system with persistent episode tracking.
• Teams producing a “podcast-to-video” series where the host must look the same every episode.

Technical details

• Shotstack integrations: Install the Shotstack community node (v0.2.1+) and import the workflow.
• Claude steps: Connect your Anthropic account in the Claude and Claude (fixes) steps.
• Self-hosted persistence: Uses n8n Data Table for episode logs and host continuity; outputs are saved to disk by your self-hosted n8n.
• Workflow logic nodes: if, set, code, no op, wait, data table.