Manic

Manic is a small language for visual explanations. You write named objects and verbs in a .manic file — title(), network(), step("predict") { forward(...) } — and the engine carries continuity, camera, and format instead of a keyframe timeline.

The public site ships three ways in: a local Engine (Homebrew cask maniclang-x/tap/manic, or a checksummed shell installer), a browser workspace at app.maniclang.com/create, and an API/docs surface. Local render needs Node 22+ and FFmpeg. manic ui launches Workbench through npx against the installed engine. There is also a Chrome extension (Manic Animate) that starts a project from a selected equation or paragraph, and an MCP server so Claude or Cursor can write and check .manic source.

Engine pricing, as of this check, is on successful finished-video exports. Failed or cancelled renders do not consume a credit. Browser Create is a separate product surface.

This belongs in the catalog because the artifact is a language and a renderer, not a prompt box. A builder can read the source of an explanation the same way they read a script.