---
url: https://peter-gy.github.io/manim-marimo/guide/agents.md
description: >-
  Let a coding agent write the notebook, the scenes, and the page, using the
  skills marimo-studio and manim-marimo ship.
---

# Author with agents

manim-marimo ships an agent skill beside marimo-studio's. A coding agent reads
both, writes the notebook's computation in marimo cells, writes the scenes and
the page, renders them in Studio, and checks the movies.

Paste this request into Claude Code, Codex, or another terminal agent, from the
folder of a notebook [set up for manim-marimo](./getting-started.md#install):

```text
Read the marimo-studio and manim-marimo skills with
`uvx --with manim-marimo agent-plugins read <name>`,
then create a notebook that explains Fourier series and an Animation view
that draws a square wave from rotating vectors.
```

[agent-plugins](https://agent-plugins.org/) prints a skill that a Python
package ships. marimo-studio's skill covers connecting to the running
notebook, creating views, building, and browser checks. manim-marimo's skill
adds the scene contract: literal reads, renderable defaults, one scene per
file, and how to verify a rendered movie.

## What the agent works with

| Source                                  | Teaches                                                                 |
| --------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `agent-plugins read marimo-studio`      | Notebook pairing, view creation, builds, preview URLs, browser checks   |
| `agent-plugins read manim-marimo`       | Scene reads, defaults, render hosts, quality, render diagnostics        |
| `AGENTS.md` in the view project         | The files of this view and who owns what                                |

Studio shows `AGENTS.md` in Source, so the agent and the author read the same
instructions.

## Point at a shape with Lens

[Lens](https://marimo-team.github.io/marimo-lens/) lets you select part of
Studio's preview and attach a note for the agent. Add it to the notebook's
dependencies, then restart Studio:

```python
# dependencies = [
#     "manim-marimo[render]",
#     "marimo-lens>=0.2.4",
# ]
```

Preview shows a Lens dock. Click **Select** and click a shape in the movie,
such as one person in the [epidemic example](../examples/epidemic.md). The
selection names the shape, `dot: Dot`, the read it shows, such as `people[17]`,
the scene line that created it, and the notebook cell that computed the read.
Targets follow the shapes as the movie plays, so pause on the frame you mean.

![Lens in Studio's preview, with one person of the epidemic selected and a note for the agent asking who infected them](/media/lens-note.webp)

Then ask:

> Use Lens to address my current selection in this Studio view.

## Create the view from code

Inside notebook code mode, an agent creates the view from the provider's
starter:

```python
import marimo_studio

workspace = marimo_studio.agent.current_workspace()
view = await workspace.create_view("animation", starter="manim-marimo/manim:default")
await view.build()
print(await view.preview_url(runtime="server"))
```

## Diagnostics an agent repairs

Inspection and builds report problems at the author's source line, so an agent
can open the file and fix it:

| Code                   | Meaning                                                     |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| `manim-read-dynamic`   | A read's target is not a string literal                     |
| `manim-scene-missing`  | A render host names a scene file that does not exist        |
| `manim-source-invalid` | A Python file in the project does not parse                 |
| `manim-render-failed`  | The scene raised, either in the build check or in a render  |

[Provider reference](../reference/provider.md#diagnostics) lists every code.