Elai

@elai list my recent videos and show me which ones are still rendering or failed

Found 12 videos in your Elai account. Three are currently rendering: 'Q4 Product Demo' (started 8 minutes ago), 'Onboarding Welcome' (started 2 minutes ago), and 'Sales Pitch v3' (started 15 minutes ago). One video failed rendering yesterday: 'Training Module 2' with error 'Insufficient rendering minutes'. The remaining 8 videos completed successfully, with the most recent being 'Customer Testimonial' rendered 3 days ago.

This example shows the MCP's ability to surface video status across your library. Useful for monitoring batch creation workflows. Note that Elai's API returns paginated results; if you have hundreds of videos, the MCP will fetch the first page by default—specify filters or ask for continuation if you need deeper history.

@elai create a story video from this blog post URL explaining our new feature, use a professional female avatar, and estimate how long the narration will be

Created draft video 'New Feature Explainer' (ID: vid_8x2k9p) from the provided URL. Generated 6 slides covering the feature overview, benefits, use cases, setup steps, pricing, and call-to-action. Selected avatar 'Sophia - Professional' for narration. Estimated speech duration: 2 minutes 18 seconds across all slides. The video is ready for review in your Elai dashboard. To render it, confirm with a separate render command—rendering will consume approximately 2.3 paid minutes from your account balance.

This example demonstrates the MCP's content-to-video pipeline: ingesting a URL, generating slides, selecting an avatar, and pre-calculating render cost. The video is created as a draft and does NOT auto-render—you must explicitly confirm rendering (which consumes your paid quota). Always verify slide content in Elai's UI before committing to render.

@elai copy our 'Product Demo Template' video, update the script on slide 2 to mention the Q1 launch date, then render it

Copied 'Product Demo Template' to new draft 'Product Demo Template (Copy)' (ID: vid_9m3n7q). Updated slide 2 script to include 'launching Q1 2025' in the narration text. Confirmed paid render request—rendering started. Current status: processing (estimated completion in 4-6 minutes). The render will consume approximately 1.8 minutes from your Elai account balance. Check back in a few minutes; I'll retrieve the final video URL once rendering completes. Note: this action is irreversible and the minutes are deducted whether the render succeeds or fails.

This example chains three operations: copy, modify, and render. It showcases the MCP's ability to automate video variations from templates. Critical: rendering is a paid, irreversible action. The MCP requires explicit confirmation (confirm_paid_render=true) to prevent accidental quota consumption. Always verify draft content before rendering, especially when modifying scripts programmatically.

When Elai beats manual video translation for global teams

A 12-person SaaS company ships onboarding videos in English, Spanish, and Japanese. Before Elai, the design team re-recorded each version with different narrators, burning two days per language. With Elai's avatar and voice library, the team writes the script once, uses Create Story Video to generate three language variants in under an hour, and renders all three overnight. The trade-off: Elai avatars look synthetic, so this works for functional onboarding content but not brand hero videos where production value signals trust. If your onboarding is text-heavy and you ship to three or more locales, Elai turns a multi-day project into a same-day task. Use Copy Video to duplicate the structure, swap the voice, and render.

Elai for recurring internal comms at distributed startups

A 25-person remote startup posts a Friday product update video to Slack every week. The PM used to record a Loom, but inconsistent lighting and background noise made it feel low-effort. Now she pastes release notes into Create Story Video, picks a consistent avatar, and renders a three-minute update in 15 minutes. The team gets a polished, repeatable format without the PM needing to be camera-ready. The boundary: if your update includes live demos or screen recordings, Elai can't handle that—stick with Loom. But for narrated slide decks or text-driven updates, Elai removes the recording friction and makes the cadence sustainable. Estimate Speech Duration helps you keep it under four minutes before you commit rendering minutes.

When Elai scales a help-center video catalog without a video team

A six-person support team at a B2B tool maintains 40 help articles but only three explainer videos, because recording and editing take half a day each. With Elai, they convert the top ten articles into Story videos in a single afternoon sprint: paste the article HTML into Create Story Video, let Elai generate slides, tweak the avatar and pacing, then batch-render overnight. The result is a searchable video library that cuts ticket volume on common questions. The limit: Elai can't screen-record your actual product UI, so these videos work best for conceptual walkthroughs or policy explanations, not click-by-click tutorials. If your help content is mostly text and you need ten or more videos to cover the long tail, Elai turns a quarter-long project into a week.