heygen

HeyGen Skills

AI agent skills for creating avatar videos. Your agent gets a face, a voice, and the ability to send video like a message.

Works with Claude Code, OpenClaw, Codex, Cursor, and other AI coding agents.

"Bring yourself to life — create your own avatar and make a 30-second intro video of yourself. Use heygen-avatar and heygen-video, ask me anything before you start."
→ reads your agent's identity files → asks only what's missing → builds the agent's avatar → picks the best style → generates the video → delivers the share link

Install

Paste this into your agent. It does the rest — clones the repo to the right path, asks for your HeyGen API key, picks the best transport, runs a verify test, and ends with a working video.

Read https://raw.githubusercontent.com/heygen-com/skills/master/INSTALL_FOR_AGENTS.md and follow it.
Ask me for any API keys you need.

That's it. The agent fetches INSTALL_FOR_AGENTS.md and walks the rest of the install. Same prompt forever — the install spec lives in the repo, not in your clipboard.

Want to install manually instead? Follow the steps below.

Step 1 — Install the skills

The repo ships three skills: heygen-avatar, heygen-video, and heygen-translate. Pick the install path that matches your tooling.

Option A: gh skill install (works across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot, Junie, Goose, OpenHands, Amp, Cline, OpenCode, Warp, and more — agentskills.io):

gh skill install heygen-com/skills heygen-avatar
gh skill install heygen-com/skills heygen-video
gh skill install heygen-com/skills heygen-translate

Requires GitHub CLI v2.90+. The CLI writes to the right directory for your agent automatically.

Option B: ClawHub:

clawhub install heygen-skills

Option C: OpenClaw plugin (bundles MCP support):

openclaw plugins install clawhub:@heygen/openclaw-plugin-heygen

Option D: Git clone (legacy path):

Agent	Install path
Claude Code	~/.claude/skills/heygen-skills
OpenClaw	~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/heygen-skills
Other	Clone anywhere your agent loads skills from

git clone --single-branch --depth 1 https://github.com/heygen-com/skills.git <install-path>/heygen-skills

After cloning, the three skills are auto-discovered at heygen-avatar/SKILL.md, heygen-video/SKILL.md, and heygen-translate/SKILL.md.

Step 2 — Get your HeyGen API key

1. Go to app.heygen.com/api (Settings → API)
2. Generate a new API key
3. Save it somewhere safe — you can't view it again after the modal closes

Step 3 — Install the HeyGen CLI

One-line install (macOS / Linux):

curl -fsSL https://static.heygen.ai/cli/install.sh | bash

Then set your API key:

export HEYGEN_API_KEY=<your-key>

That's ephemeral (current shell only). To persist across sessions, add export HEYGEN_API_KEY=<your-key> to your shell profile (~/.zshrc, ~/.bashrc, or equivalent).

Verify:

heygen --version
heygen auth status

The HeyGen CLI is a single static binary. No runtime deps.

Alternative: MCP (OAuth, no API key)

If you prefer OAuth and already have a HeyGen plan with credits, connect the remote MCP server instead of setting an API key. The skills will auto-detect MCP when no HEYGEN_API_KEY is set.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http heygen https://mcp.heygen.com/mcp/v1/

OpenClaw: add to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "heygen": { "url": "https://mcp.heygen.com/mcp/v1/" }
    }
  }
}

The first call triggers an OAuth consent flow in your browser.

Priority: If HEYGEN_API_KEY is set, the skills use the CLI. Otherwise they look for MCP tools. Set the key only if you want direct API access; otherwise use MCP.

Step 4 — Create your avatar

Ask the user for a photo (URL or file), then use the heygen-avatar skill:

Create my HeyGen avatar from this photo: [user's photo]

The skill uploads the photo, creates a persistent digital twin with a voice, and saves an AVATAR-<NAME>.md file for future use.

Step 5 — Make your first video

Use the heygen-video skill to generate an intro video with the avatar you just created:

Make a 30-60 second video of me introducing myself, casual tone.

The skill picks up the avatar automatically, writes a script, generates the video, and returns a share link.

That's it. You're set up. The avatar persists — every future video reuses it automatically.

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What's Included

Three skills that work standalone or chain together: