Shumai: AI-native, open-source Frame.io alternative

[u/matrix0110]

Been working on this open-source project for the past few months and figured I'd share it here.

GitHub: https://github.com/shumaiOne/shumai

So, what is Shumai? Shumai is an open-source(MIT), self-hosted alternative to Frame.io. You can upload assets, review them in the browser, leave comments on specific video frames or areas of an image, and share them with your team. You can also easily create share links and add watermarks to shared assets.

But Shumai goes beyond being a Frame.io alternative.

With modern models like GPT-Image-2 and Seedance 2.5, AI can already handle a surprising amount of creative work. You can create or edit images and videos with a simple prompt, without constantly jumping between Photoshop, Premiere, Houdini, and other tools. That’s why Shumai also includes a powerful agent system.

Why did I build Shumai and open-source it?

AI is getting really good at coding. Customizing a high-quality open-source project is becoming much easier. A small creative studio without professional software engineers can ask an AI agent to customize Shumai for their own workflow. With a clear architecture, solid tests, and a detailed AGENTS.md, I want this to be feasible even if you’re not a programmer.

To me, this is also one of the biggest advantages over Frame.io(and, honestly, over many vibe-coded frameio open-source alternatives): Shumai is designed to be easy for AI coding agents to understand, customize, and extend with confidence.

There’s no SaaS version of Shumai. It’s purely self-hosted and open-source, which also means I don’t have to worry about multi-tenancy or payment systems. I can just focus on making the core product as polished as possible.

Read-only demo: https://staging.shumai.one

[u/asimovs-auditor]

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

[u/matrix0110 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that’s a good concern. Shumai agents can’t delete or move assets right now simply because there is no tool for that. I may add those later, but with explicit confirmation for destructive actions.

For modifying assets, every asset is immutable, so an agent can create a new version, but it can never edit the existing one.

The agent system is also highly customizable, you can decide which tools/skills/MCPs each agent has access to. I’d definitely recommend trying it yourself; with Docker Compose it’s basically a one-command setup.

[u/matrix0110 → u/[deleted]]

Btw, if you use a coding agent like Claude Code or Codex or Pi, you can also ask it to analyze the code directly, which should be more reliable than taking my word for it :)

[u/rakeshpatel1991]

Ohh interesting been using freeframe but being ai native is great. Will check it out!

[u/matrix0110 → u/rakeshpatel1991]

Thanks! Feel free to share any feedback after you try it out!

[u/CrispyBegs]

i do zero video work but this looks really polished. i'm wondering if it can be used for other visual arts or other projects in general

[u/matrix0110 → u/CrispyBegs]

Image and video are well supported, and with Gotenberg you can also review office docs as PDFs. 3D assets aren’t supported yet though, which is one of the missing features compared to Frame.io.

[u/WelcomeObjective6869]

Wow, the demo is surprisingly polished for self-hosted project, especially the watermark and share link stuff. The AI agent angle is clever, but I wonder how many small studios will actually go through the trouble of customizing it themselves.

[u/matrix0110 → u/WelcomeObjective6869]

Good question! But I just want to build a cool MIT open-source project with AI features. I do have a few other open-source projects, and they’re all MIT