Recipes and Guided Workflows

Recipes are step-by-step templates that guide StarZero Agents through common video creation tasks. Instead of giving the AI open-ended instructions, a recipe provides a structured plan — like handing a checklist to your production assistant.

What Are Recipes?

Think of recipes as reusable playbooks. Each recipe contains a series of steps written in plain English that tell the AI exactly what to do and in what order. When you launch a recipe, each step becomes a tracked task in your to-do list so you can follow along as the work happens.

For example, the Podcast Cutdown recipe walks the AI through finding a strong storyline, trimming it to the right length, adding captions, and rendering the final clip — all without you needing to micromanage each step.

Built-In Recipes

StarZero Agents comes with three ready-to-use recipes:

• Podcast Cutdown — Extract a self-contained story from a longer podcast episode
• Social Media Cutdown — Create short, vertical clips optimized for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts
• Podcast Summary — Condense a full episode into a structured highlight video

These cover the most common content repurposing workflows. Just ask for one in the chat and StarZero Agents takes it from there.

How to Use a Recipe

From the Podcast Clips Screen

The fastest way to create podcast clips is from the dedicated Podcast Clips screen in the sidebar. Paste a video URL or upload a file, configure your options, and hit Cut my clips. No chat needed — the whole flow is guided. See Podcast Cutdown for full details on the options available.

From the Welcome Screen

You can also launch a recipe from the recipe picker on the welcome screen. When you open a new chat, you'll see all available recipes listed — both built-in and custom. Select one, optionally choose which content to work with, and hit Go.

From the Chat

You can also ask for a recipe by name in the chat. You don't need any special syntax — just describe what you want:

"Create a podcast cutdown from this episode"

"Make a 45-second social media clip from the interview"

"Summarize this podcast episode in about 3 minutes"

StarZero Agents recognizes your intent, selects the matching recipe, and starts working through the steps. A recipe header appears at the top of the chat showing the recipe name, description, and a to-do list that tracks progress on each step in real time.

Creating Your Own Recipes

The built-in recipes are just the beginning. You can create custom recipes tailored to your team's specific workflows, brand guidelines, or content formats. Head to Customize → Cookbook to get started.

Tips for Getting the Best Results

• Be specific about duration. "Create a 90-second cutdown" gives better results than "make a short clip."
• Mention the topic if you have one. "Create a cutdown about the startup funding story" helps the AI focus on the right moments.
• Review before rendering. Recipes produce a draft on the timeline — take a look and request tweaks before you render.
• Try multiple cutdowns. Ask for several non-overlapping cutdowns from the same source to get more content from one episode.