How to make videos with Zapier

1. Schedule by Zapier: Every Week, Monday at 9:00. Then a Zapier Agents step (or another AI step) with the instructions from the skills section writes the week's title and narration.
2. MCP Client → Run Tool: create_job with your template_id, the title, the script and a thumbnail_reference_url, with Parse Content on. Cliptude creates nothing yet and returns its review (settings, warnings, credits) and a review_token, valid for 24 hours.
3. Human in the Loop → Request Approval: send the review to yourself by Slack or email, and set a decline to stop the Zap.
4. MCP Client → Run Tool: create_job again with the same arguments plus the review_token (and acknowledge, if the review listed items you accepted). Keep the job id.
5. Delay by Zapier → Delay For 45 minutes, then MCP Client → Run Read-Only Tool: get_job. Paths: if the status is completed, go on; otherwise add a second Delay For and get_job.
6. Slack or Gmail: send the video link. Before you publish, open the job in Cliptude, or ask a chat agent to run open_editor_project and view_scenes, and look at every frame.

Source: Zapier Help: Use Human in the Loop to pause Zaps pending human review

Zapier publishes agent skills, but they are for coding agents, not for Zaps. zapier/agent-skills installs with npx skills add zapier/agent-skills and teaches an agent such as Claude Code or Cursor to set up, build, inspect and change Zapier Workflows. The zapier-mcp plugin adds onboarding and role skills on top of Zapier MCP in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and others.

A Zap or Zapier Agent has no skills folder of its own, and the skills CLI has no Zapier target. The equivalent is the agent's instructions, which it follows in order, or the prompt of the AI step that writes your narration. Paste the rules from the cliptude-script skill there: research the topic, write the spoken narration, and never pass the title as the prompt.

If you build your Zaps with a coding agent, install both sets there: npx skills add zapier/agent-skills for Zapier, and npx skills add cliptude/cliptude for Cliptude's cliptude, cliptude-script and cliptude-plan skills.

npx skills add zapier/agent-skills
npx skills add cliptude/cliptude

You write narration for long-form 16:9 YouTube videos made with Cliptude.
- Research this week's topic and write the spoken narration only, about 150 words a minute.
- Never use the video title as the narration.
- Return the title and the script. Do not start a video.

Source: zapier/agent-skills (GitHub)

All three can call Cliptude from a schedule. Zapier is the quickest to set up, with a ready approval step and free waiting, but the full workflow needs a paid plan and each completed action counts as a task. n8n bills per run and can be self-hosted, which suits frequent videos; Make sits between them with per-action credits on a visual canvas.

Source: Zapier pricing

Zapier's Free plan has 100 tasks a month and two-step Zaps only, so it cannot run this workflow, and Delay and Human in the Loop are not on it. Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed annually ($29.99 monthly) for 750 tasks; Team starts at $69 a month billed annually for 2,000 tasks. Each completed action is a task; triggers, failed actions and built-in tools such as Delay, Formatter and Paths are not counted.

Zapier MCP, the server that gives AI clients your Zapier actions, uses 2 tasks per successful tool call from the same pool. A weekly video Zap uses a handful of tasks per run plus the AI step's model. The video itself is charged to your Cliptude credits, on a plan from $19; Cliptude has no free plan.

Source: Zapier pricing

Zapier is a no-code automation platform. A Zap starts from a trigger, such as a schedule or a new row, and runs actions in other apps; Zapier Agents are AI agents that follow written instructions with the same apps. MCP Client by Zapier, in beta, adds tool calls to any remote MCP server, which is how a Zap reaches Cliptude.

Zapier MCP or MCP Client by Zapier?

Zapier MCP is a server at mcp.zapier.com that lets an AI client such as Claude run Zapier actions, at 2 tasks per successful tool call. MCP Client by Zapier works the other way: a Zap or agent calls an outside MCP server. To make Cliptude videos from a Zap, use MCP Client.

Run Tool or Run Read-Only Tool?

Run Read-Only Tool is a search for tools that change nothing, such as list_templates, estimate_credits and get_job, which Cliptude marks read-only. Use the Run Tool action for create_job, which starts a job and spends credits.