Stills to motion

Once you’ve nailed the stills, branch into a different Technique using the winners as keyframes — without losing context. This is where FLORA MCP starts paying for itself: fast iteration in chat, then background mode for the longer-running motion work.

Prerequisite: A set of approved stills from Discover and run or Iterate on favorites.

What you type

Take the winners and run them through the Social Motion Technique. I need 3-second loops for IG.

What the agent does

1. Switches to background mode

   Motion generation takes longer than stills. Most agents propose moving the task to a background panel — Claude calls this Cowork, Cursor calls it an agent run, and so on. The task runs while you keep working in chat.

2. list_techniques + retrieve_technique

   The agent finds the Social Motion Technique and reads its inputs. It expects keyframes as imageUrl inputs and accepts duration and loop parameters.

3. create_technique_run

   The agent submits one run per chosen still, passing each as a keyframe. The background panel displays the task: “Generating motion versions of 5 thumbnails.”

4. retrieve_technique_run

   The agent polls each run. Inline MP4 previews start playing on autoplay-loop as each one finishes, labeled with the source thumbnail number.

What you see

A task panel appears with progress per run. As each motion version finishes, it pops into the chat as a short looping MP4, tagged “from #4”, “from #7”, and so on. Click any one to open it full-size or download.

Why context survives the branch

You didn’t re-describe the brand direction, the brief, or your favorites. The Social Motion Technique didn’t need to know any of that — the agent just passed the chosen output URLs as keyframes. The Technique system handles the rest.

This is the part that’s hard with single-shot generative MCPs. With FLORA, your choice of favorites doesn’t get lost when you switch from stills to motion.

Variations

• “Run only #4 through Social Motion — 3 seconds, loop. And #7 through the Hero Motion Technique — 6 seconds, no loop.”
• “Use #4 as the start frame and #7 as the end frame for a single morphing loop.” (Requires a Technique that accepts paired keyframes.)
• “Generate the motion versions in 9:16 vertical for IG Stories.” (Most motion Techniques expose an aspect ratio input.)

Under the hood

# The agent finds the motion Technique
list_techniques(query="social motion")
retrieve_technique(slug="social-motion")

# One run per chosen still, in parallel
create_technique_run(
  slug="social-motion",
  inputs={
    "keyframe": "<url for #4>",
    "duration_seconds": 3,
    "loop": true
  }
)
create_technique_run(
  slug="social-motion",
  inputs={
    "keyframe": "<url for #7>",
    ...
  }
)
# ...etc for each chosen still

# Each run polled independently
retrieve_technique_run(runId)

When to use background mode vs chat

	Inline chat	Background mode
Run time	Seconds to ~30s	Anything longer
Inline rendering	Yes	Yes, when ready
Keep working in parallel	Blocked while polling	Unblocked
Best for	Discovery, iteration, single runs	Motion, batches, anything >30s
Examples by client	Default chat	Claude Cowork, Cursor agent runs, VS Code agent mode

Most clients auto-pick background mode for longer tasks. You can override: “Do this inline — I want to watch it.”

Tips

• For consistent motion across a set, run all keyframes through the same Technique in one batch — don’t mix Techniques mid-set.
• Motion Techniques charge more credits per run than stills. Confirm cost in retrieve_technique before kicking off a big batch.
• Save approved motion outputs to a Project (attach_project_asset) so they show up in FLORA’s canvas alongside the stills.