jevreel: ask questions about videos skill

jevreel: ask questions about videos

jevreel lays a video out on contact sheets at one frame per second and has Jev, TypeSafe's fast decision model, screen every sheet in parallel, then re-check the best windows on full frames. You (the main agent) then look at what it found. Jev gives typed answers and probabilities, never descriptions: reading, describing and concluding is your job.

Setup check

• A TypeSafe API key is needed for anything that asks Jev (indexing with a timeline, ask, find, locate, whole, lenses): TYPESAFE_API_KEY, or a key saved with jevreel login. Zoom, transcripts and timeline queries work without it. If tools report a missing key under Codex, have the user run uvx --from "jevreel[url]==0.2.0" jevreel login themselves (it asks for the key; never ask for it in chat).
• ffmpeg and ffprobe must be on PATH.
• URLs need jevreel[url]; videos without captions need jevreel[asr] for a transcript.

Workflow

1. Index once. MCP index_video(source) or jevreel index <file-or-url>. Later calls take the returned id, the path, or the title ("tears of steel"). Re-indexing an indexed video returns at once.
2. Find moments. ask_video(video, query) / jevreel ask <id> "<query>".
   • Write the query as a plain description of what would be visible or said: "a bar chart on a slide", "someone opens a laptop", "the speaker mentions pricing".
   • One thing per query. Split "a red car and a dog" into two asks; Jev is most accurate on simple questions.
   • mode: visual (on screen only), speech (transcript only, cheapest), both, or auto.
   • Narrow with start/end when the user names a part of the video.
3. Find from a photo. find_in_video(video, image_path, note="person") / jevreel find <id> photo.jpg --note person.
4. Look before you answer. Hits are leads, not facts. Verified hits come with frame, a full-resolution image of the moment: look at it. zoom_video(video, start, end) / jevreel zoom <id> 12:00 12:10 gives more frames. locate_in_frame(video, at, target) boxes and crops one thing in one frame for close reading.
5. What is said. video_transcript(video, start, end) / jevreel transcript <id> --start 12:00 --end 13:00.
6. Whole-video questions. ask_whole_video(video, question, kind, options) / jevreel whole <id> "Is this a tutorial?". Use kind=choice with options, or kind=score with levels lowest first (at most 10).

Lenses: when the same questions matter across the whole video

When the user cares about several things throughout a video (who is on screen, safety rules, brands, weather, whether a slide is up), don't ask each one separately. Run a lens: every minute answers all of its questions in one request. Then filter the answers as often as needed, for free.

• MCP run_lens(video, lens) with {"name": "site", "questions": [{"name": "helmet_off", "type": "noul", "ask": "Is a worker without a helmet visible?"}, {"name": "vehicle", "type": "choice", "ask": "Which vehicle is most visible?", "options": ["car", "truck", "none"]}, {"name": "crowd", "type": "score", "ask": "How crowded is it?", "levels": ["Empty", "Some", "Busy"]}]}. CLI: jevreel lens <id> lens.toml. To include a lens while indexing, pass it to index_video (or jevreel index --lens); it then costs almost nothing extra.
• query_timeline(video, "helmet_off > 0.7") / jevreel query <id> "helmet_off > 0.7 and vehicle == truck". Conditions are column op value joined by and; quote a value that contains "and" (place == 'books and a desk'). Omit where to see every minute and its columns. Yes/no questions also give <name>_at, the second it is most visible.
• The default timeline columns are there too: people, talking_to_camera, screen_or_slides, text_on_screen, cut, setting, activity (0-3), keyframe.

Reading results

• probability is Jev's yes-probability; strong means at least 0.7. For verified hits it comes from the full frames, at / time is the frame that showed it best, and screened is the contact-sheet probability before. Unverified hits come from the sheet alone.
• shown and said are the screen and transcript questions, asked separately.
• also lists other likely moments in the same window.
• Probabilities rank well but are not guaranteed calibrated. Look before stating anything you have not seen, and say so when you have only a weak hit.
• No hits above the threshold is a real answer, but check weak first: windows Jev did not rule out, including ones verification overturned. Zoom into them before saying "not found".
• Cite moments by their times (for example "at 12:04"), so the user can jump there.

Costs

Jev bills input tokens only, and repeated identical requests are answered from jevreel's cache for free (cached in results). Every ask sends each sheet in range once (one sheet per minute of video), plus one request per verified window, so narrowing with start/end makes asks cheaper and faster. Results report requests, cached, input_tokens and estimated_usd.