The Slot — a personal WCS combo wall

A tiny, no-server web app: a grid of looping dance-combo clips. Tap one to enlarge it and jump to the original lesson video. Adding combos is one command.

the-slot/
├── index.html       the whole app (open in a browser)
├── combos.txt       your list of combos
├── add_combo.py     reads combos.txt, clips everything, updates the wall
├── combos.json      the wall's data (auto-written)
├── lessons/         downloaded source videos (stay on your computer)
└── clips/           the short generated clips (these get published)

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How sources work (read this first)

Your lesson videos live in Google Photos. Google removed all API access to your existing Photos in 2025, so no tool can fetch them from a link automatically. The fix is small: download each lesson video once, then the tool does the rest.

In Google Photos (web): open the lesson video → ⋮ menu → Download (or Shift+D). Save it into the lessons/ folder. You do this once per lesson, not per combo — one download covers all the combos you cut from that lesson.

(If a video is ever in Google Drive instead, those links can be auto-downloaded — see the Drive note at the bottom.)

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One-time setup

1. Install ffmpeg (cuts the clips)

• macOS: brew install ffmpeg · Windows: winget install ffmpeg · Linux: sudo apt install ffmpeg
• (yt-dlp is optional — only needed if you ever use Google Drive links. On macOS, install it with brew install yt-dlp, not pip.)

2. Put this folder on GitHub Pages (so you can open it on your phone)

git init && git add -A && git commit -m "combo wall"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin https://github.com/YOUR_NAME/YOUR_REPO.git
git push -u origin main

Then on GitHub: Settings → Pages → Deploy from a branch → main / root → Save. Live at https://YOUR_NAME.github.io/YOUR_REPO/. Open it on your phone and use Share → Add to Home Screen for an app icon. (Your big lessons/ videos are not uploaded — only the small clips are.)

Free GitHub Pages is reachable by anyone with the URL (obscure, not password-protected). Want it fully private? Ask and I'll switch the hosting.

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Adding combos

1. Download the lesson video(s) from Photos into lessons/ (see above).
2. In Google Photos, copy the link to each lesson video (open it → Share → Copy link).
3. Open combos.txt. For each lesson, add one @ line, then a line per combo:

   @ lessons/sat-intermediate.mp4 | https://photos.google.com/album/.../photo/...
   2:05  2:10   Sugar push variation | push
   3:40  3:52   Left side pass | pass, beginner
   
   @ lessons/sunday-advanced.mp4 | https://photos.google.com/album/.../photo/...
   1:10  1:22
   

   The @ line pairs the local file with the link the card's Open source video button will use. Times are mm:ss, h:mm:ss, or seconds. Title and | tags are optional — omit them and the clip is named after the lesson + timestamp.
4. Run it:

   python3 add_combo.py --batch combos.txt --publish
   

   It clips every range into a small mp4, writes them to the wall, and pushes to GitHub. Re-running is safe — anything already added is skipped, so keep appending lines and re-run anytime. Drop --publish to preview locally first.

One-off without the list

python3 add_combo.py --video lessons/sat.mp4 --start 12:30 --end 12:38 \
  --url "https://photos.google.com/album/.../photo/..." --title "Whip with tuck" --tags whip

Other bits

• Preview locally: python3 -m http.server then open localhost:8000 (don't open index.html as a file — browsers block it from reading combos.json).
• Edit / remove: edit combos.json, or delete an entry plus its file in clips/.
• Rename the wall: the wordmark is in the <header> of index.html; the subtitle is in the CONFIG block just below.
• Sharper or longer clips: --width 720, or --keep-audio to keep sound.

Google Drive (optional auto-download)

If a source is in Drive, you can skip the manual download and put the link inline:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/FILE_ID/view   12:30   12:38   Title | tag

This uses yt-dlp with your browser login: add --browser firefox (or safari/edge) if you don't use Chrome; close the browser if it says cookies are locked.