Imported from dkackman/diffusers-workflow (plugins/dw/skills/minimax-h3/SKILL.md). Install upstream with npx skills add dkackman/diffusers-workflow --skill minimax-h3. Copyright stays with the author.

MiniMax H3 on a dw server

H3 generates video and audio together: speech with lip sync, ambient sound, score. Every template here fits a 24 GB card. This skill chooses the template and the arguments; the prompt format is MiniMax's and comes from their text, not from here.

Before anything

1. get_server_info: the device (H3 templates are CUDA; the quantized configurations do not run on mps) and which workspace this session is in.
2. list_workflows(shape="shot"), list_workflows(shape="sequence") and list_workflows(shape="audio"): the family's templates by their current names, with summary, traits and cost. Trust the listing over the names quoted below.
3. get_workflow on the one chosen, for its variables and their defaults.

Which shape is the request

• One clip, up to 14.4 seconds, from text: templates/minimax/video-with-audio. From a one-line idea: templates/minimax/enhance-prompt writes the prompt with the built-in Context-IR enhancer first.
• Pinned to a picture: first frame templates/minimax/image-to-video; first and last templates/minimax/first-and-last-frame; last only templates/minimax/last-frame-only; a one-line idea plus a picture templates/minimax/enhance-prompt-with-image.
• A subject that must look the same: templates/minimax/reference-to-video (an image fixes appearance, an audio clip fixes voice); templates/minimax/composable-references adds a video reference for framing and camera; templates/minimax/generated-subject-reference draws the subject with Z-Image first and references it in the same workflow; templates/minimax/voice-timbre-reference fixes a voice from a Bark-spoken line.
• Several boards in one generation, one unbroken score: templates/minimax/storyboard - H3 cuts between the boards inside a single generation, which no concat of separate clips can match for continuous audio. It is one beat with fixed cut points, not a building block: four of them concatenated give twelve equal-length shots and a cast redrawn four times. Past one beat with a recurring cast, use the cuts pattern below.
• Longer than 14.4 seconds: decide first whether the seam is a cut or a continuation. Chain when the same action or line of speech has to cross the seam; cut when the scene changes, and treat each cut as its own generation. Six distinct scenes are a cuts piece, not a chain.
• Longer than 14.4 seconds as one take: a chain. templates/minimax/chained-segments (last-frame continuity), templates/minimax/chain-video-continuity (the previous segment's tail rides along as a video reference - motion, camera and voice carry across the seam), templates/minimax/chain-matched-to-audio (a supplied track sets the length and is muxed back seamless), templates/minimax/chain-matched-and-aligned (all of it, per-segment prompts). Drift compounds per seam: reference the subject picture in every segment, prefer last_segment continuity, and use the longest segments memory allows.
• A piece with cuts: fresh shots from shared portraits, then a concat. templates/minimax/dialogue-short (Z-Image draws the cast, one shot per entry of its shots list on one loaded model, concat_videos splices) and templates/minimax/music-video (a song, one slice and one lip-synced shot per entry). shots is one list argument: a dialogue entry is name, prompt, references (which portraits and voices this shot uses) and num_frames; a music-video entry is name, prompt and start_frame. A six-shot piece is one more entry, not another file. The listing's lists block says what an entry carries; its cost carries per_entry when one shot was measured: quote minutes - per_entry.minutes × per_entry.entries + per_entry.minutes × N for N entries. Without per_entry, quote the total and say it is the default list's. A cut erases drift; the last shot is as clean as the first. Write shots, not takes. Each shot generates its own audio, so write non_diegetic_music: N/A in every shot and lay one score under the concat afterwards: templates/minimax/music writes the track and templates/assemble-and-score shows the pair_audio step that mixes it under the world sound (it takes three shots; for more, author the concat and score steps the same way). A character who speaks in several shots keeps one voice by passing the same clip as an audio reference in each (the voice-timbre-reference pattern); a repeated voice description alone drifts. Each entry's num_frames is its own, so pace the cut. The reference carries delivery as well as timbre: a flat read gives a flat performance. Bark's presets are conversational; for a narrator with gravitas, upload_asset a recorded read in that register and reference the same file in every shot.
• Music alone: templates/minimax/music (Music3); the minimax-music3 skill.

If none fits, compose from list_tasks before authoring a new workflow, and read the workflows guide's authoring section first.

Hard rules

• num_frames is 17n + 5, from 124 to 345, at a fixed 24 fps: 5.17 to 14.4 seconds in one clip. Most templates default to 124 for fast iteration (storyboard uses 192); num_frames=345 is the full length and fits the same 24 GB configuration. The 5-second floor is diffusers'; the model card says 4.
• Canvas: a 768-pixel short edge, at most 768x1344 pixels, dimensions in multiples of 32, aspect from 1:4 to 4:1. Output audio is 32 kHz stereo.
• The text- and frame-conditioned templates render at 960x544 with the 544p turbo LoRA in nine steps, and those three go together - change one, change all three. Six templates that condition on references alone (reference-to-video, composable-references, voice-timbre-reference, generated-subject-reference, chain-matched-to-audio, chain-video-continuity) carry no LoRA and run 20 steps, because the turbo LoRA is distilled against the base transformer and they load the reference one; such a run is about twice the time of a turbo one at the same length. storyboard, dialogue-short, music-video and chain-matched-and-aligned pass references and keep the turbo LoRA at nine steps; say nine for those, not 20.
• Nothing carries between generations except what is passed as a reference: no latent memory and no extension mode, in the checkpoint, the hosted API or diffusers. Identity rides on a picture, voice on an audio clip, motion and camera on a video tail (what a chain passes forward), and a score across cuts is laid under the concat afterwards.
• H3 is guidance-distilled: no guidance_scale, no negative prompt. Say what is there, never what is not.
• When deriving a variant, keep release_pipeline on the step the template puts it on: it frees the Z-Image boards before H3 loads. A run killed by SIGKILL near the end, in a worker warm from a previous job, that succeeds on a retry in a fresh worker is host memory, not the prompt.
• Ref2VA limits: at most 9 images, 3 videos, 3 audio clips, 12 files; audio can never be the only reference. References are labelled in the order passed.
• Music3 reads audio_duration as a ceiling, not a target: ask for more than the song needs and trim with templates/audio-trim-fade. The minimax-music3 skill has the rest of that family.
• Write the prompt for the length being generated: shot timestamps should span the duration, or a five-second script conditions a five-second story whatever the frame count.

Prompts

H3 wants Context-IR, MiniMax's own format. Do not invent it and do not paraphrase it from examples:

1. If the h3-prompt-writing skill is installed (MiniMax ships it in https://github.com/MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-H3 under skills/), use it. If it is not, tell the user once that npx skills add MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-H3 --skill h3-prompt-writing installs it - only that skill; the repo's other eight are style packs - and go on without it.
2. Else read the guides on the model card: https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3/raw/main/docs/VIDEO_PROMPT_WRITING_GUIDE_base_en.md for text- and frame-conditioned generation, and https://huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3/raw/main/docs/VIDEO_PROMPT_WRITING_GUIDE_ref_en.md for reference-conditioned generation.
3. Else run templates/minimax/enhance-prompt (or -with-image), whose built-in enhancer writes the format from those guides. Its idea is framed as Task: T2VA. Duration: 5.17 seconds. Idea: ....

Whichever route: write the whole script before the first shot - the lines in order, read once, should carry the piece on their own - then place them. Repeat a speaker's voice description verbatim across shots, and when a reference picture should fix identity but not framing, say so in the prompt itself - in a reference-conditioned request, in the lines that define the subject and state what each reference keeps - or every shot inherits the portrait's composition.

Run and judge

1. validate_workflow first - free, and it catches arguments the pipeline does not accept.
2. Quote the listing's cost (warm minutes on the card it was measured on; a first load is longer). When the listing declares none, say so and give the shape of the spend instead: a 124-frame turbo clip is a few minutes on a 24 GB card, the full 345 frames about three times that, a reference-conditioned clip about twice a turbo one, and a chain multiplies by its segment count. Get the user's go-ahead before run_workflow with acknowledged_cost=true.
3. wait_for_job, then get_job for the manifest. A cancelled H3 job runs on to its next step boundary, minutes on this model. Each entry carries subfolder: final is the deliverable (episode, music_video, voyage), intermediate the scratch; keep that split in anything you compose.
4. You cannot watch a video: no tool returns a frame from one. Hand the user the gallery url (list_gallery, or the manifest's file name) and ask them to look, and check what you can yourself - get_job for the manifest and its warnings, get_gallery_metadata for duration, size and whether an audio stream is present. get_output_image works only on image steps, which in this family are the Z-Image portraits and boards of templates/minimax/dialogue-short, templates/minimax/storyboard, templates/minimax/generated-subject-reference and templates/minimax/music-video. Ask the user to look for the family's failure modes: a character that changes between shots (reference the same portraits in every shot), a reference portrait imposing its framing on every shot, a storyboard skipped, drift sharpening into noise late in a chain, a voice-over without affect (the reference's delivery came through), every shot the same length, a look word repeated on every board (shallow depth of field) softening every shot.
5. After an inline run worth keeping, get_job_workflow and save_workflow it, so the next run is by name rather than by pasting JSON; export_job bundles the run — workflow, manifest, job row and media — for git. The bundle is on the server: fetch its zip URL and unpack it into exports/ under the session's working directory, never a temp directory, and do not make a folder named after the job id first, since the archive already unpacks into one.

Sources

MiniMax-H3 model card and prompt guides (huggingface.co/MiniMaxAI/MiniMax-H3), the h3-prompt-writing skill (github.com/MiniMax-AI/MiniMax-H3), the diffusers MiniMax-H3 modular pipeline, the lightx2v/Minimax-h3-Turbo LoRA notes. Read 2026-09-07; the audit is docs/proposals/audits/2026-09-07-minimax-h3-audit.md.