When you're testing whether a channel concept will work at all, this is the cheapest viable pipeline. Trade Runway for Pexels stock, ElevenLabs Pro for the free voice tier, and Perplexity Pro for free Claude.
Free Claude tier handles topic research and 1,200-word scripts. Skip Perplexity until you're sure the niche works.
Free tier gives you 10k characters/month, enough for ~3 short scripts. Use a marketplace voice, not a clone.
Free, ships with stock footage built in plus AI captions and auto-cut to beat. The whole pipeline collapses into one app.
Scribe v2 Medical is now generally available as a specialized batch speech recognition model for medical and clinical audio. It maintains the same billing rate as Scribe v2 and supports keyterm prompting, entity detection, speaker diarization, and no-verbatim mode. Pass scribe_v2_medical as the model_id parameter.
Outbound telephony configurations now support Twilio answering machine detection with two modes: early human-or-machine verdict or waiting for voicemail greeting to finish. Detection results are delivered via the new answering_machine_detection webhook event.
Outbound calls through Twilio can now detect whether they reach a human or answering machine. Configure detection mode to trigger early detection or wait for voicemail greetings to complete. Results arrive via a new answering_machine_detection webhook event.
Agent response WebSocket events include optional attachments with URL, name, and optional MIME type. Enables agents to send files and documents to users during conversations.
One Claude session: research the topic, then write the script. Skip the dedicated research tool.
I'm writing a 7-minute faceless YouTube script for {{audience}}.
Topic: {{topic}}
Angle: {{angle}}
Tone: {{e.g. documentary, sardonic explainer}}
Step 1: Brainstorm 6 to 8 specific facts, dates, names, or quotes you'd cite if you had research access. Mark anything you're uncertain about with [VERIFY].
Step 2: Write a 1,200-word script using ONLY the items from step 1. Hook in the first line, one retention beat per minute, [B-ROLL: …] tags every 8 to 12 seconds.
I'll spot-check the [VERIFY] items myself before recording.ElevenLabs free tier. Pick a marketplace voice, paste the script, render at default settings.
CapCut: drop voiceover, use the built-in stock library for b-roll (search by [B-ROLL] tags), auto-captions, export 1080p, upload.
Solo creator validating a 'historical disasters' niche. Shipped 4 videos at $0 cost; the third hit 12k views and confirmed the angle. Then they upgraded to the recommended stack.
CapCut's stock library is shallow per-niche. After 3 to 4 videos you'll see the same clips repeat. Move to Runway/Pika once you commit.
Marketplace free voices kill watch time within the first 30 seconds for narrative content. Validate with this stack, then pay for ElevenLabs Creator.
What changed in AI tools and the stacks that ship. One email a week.
