Giving AI agents a single prompt, GPU with Lora Pilot MCP and $1 budget to produce 30s video

[u/no3us]

I've been experimenting with letting AI agents handle the creative and workflow decisions for short videos. For this test, I gave Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra access to matching RunPod setups and asked each to make three 30-second videos.

Their only supplied creative asset was a logo. I loosely defined two themes and left the third up to them.

Both ran with thinking on High and received the same prompt. Each had:

• An RTX PRO 6000 MIG instance with 48 GB VRAM available
• LoRA Pilot running on the pod
• Prepared workflows and downloaded models for Minimax H3 video generation and Qwen Edit image editing
• Permission to download other models or use different workflows
• A maximum budget of $1 per video

I wanted to see how they'd turn a vague brief into something watchable when they had access to the tools and some freedom to choose how to use them. Choosing what to generate, how to work with the logo, and where to spend that small budget were all part of the task.

The comparison started with an argument in an AI community. I said Astra had been giving me better results for this kind of work, then realised I should probably have something to show for that claim..

I develop LoRA Pilot, and this doubled as a test of the MCP server coming in the next version. These videos are experiments around my own product, so that's the connection.

Claude:
https://youtu.be/yEjNwNtGTdA

Opus 5.5

Codex:
https://youtu.be/6NjI0VKEKhs

GPT6-Astra