Justin Taylor | Hyper Brew, Bolt, Open Source and Adobe Plugin Development

Today I'm speaking with Justin Taylor, editor, motion designer, and founder of [Hyper Brew](https://hyperbrew.co), a company that builds plugins and automation tools for creative teams.

If you listened to my conversation with Adam Plouff, you'll know that Adam builds many of his tools on top of something Justin created called the [Bolt frameworks](https://github.com/hyperbrew). Adam makes the tools. Justin makes the tools the tool makers use.

This episode goes deeper into the development side than most. We talk about what "pipeline" actually means at studios like Buck, how the Adobe plugin landscape evolved from expressions to CEP to UXP, and how Justin turned open source into a business model. If that's not your world, the conversation opens with his journey from churning out product videos to automating the boring parts, and closes with where video tooling is headed (AI, Figma acquiring Weavy, and whether we'll all be writing our own tools soon).

## Topics Discussed

- From shooting product videos to automating the edits in Premiere Pro

- Working at Verasity CoLab and sharing tools with a mid-size video team

- Getting ProIO on aescripts and meeting Lloyd Alvarez

- Meeting Zack Lovatt at SIGGRAPH and the Adobe dev community

- Working at Buck as a creative technologist on pipeline development

- What "pipeline" actually means at studios like Buck

- Building tools for Cinema 4D, Figma, Nuke, Maya, and Houdini

- The early days of Adobe plugin development before proper documentation existed

- Going full-time with Hyper Brew

- The tagline evolution from "software solutions for video" to "we automate the boring"

- Working with Eric Moore from Brand Autopsy on messaging

- Adobe Video Partner Program and testing beta builds

- The Adobe plugin landscape: expressions, ExtendScript, CEP, and UXP

- Why Adobe moved from CEP to UXP

- How Bolt CEP became Bolt UXP, Bolt Figma, and Bolt Express

- Getting funding from aescripts, Figma's Creators Fund, and Adobe

- Custom tools for clients: image recognition, OCR, custom captions for a sports league

- Languages used: JavaScript, C++, Rust, Python, Lua

- Why extensible tools (Premiere, After Effects, Figma) win over closed ones like Affinity

- Klutz GPT and why Hyper Brew doesn't use AI for client code

- Custom vs off-the-shelf tools: 50% vs 100%

- Remotion and agents for video

- Figma acquiring Weavy

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Justin Taylor and Hyperbrew

01:44 The Journey to Tool Development

06:42 The Evolution of ProIO and Its Impact

12:26 Building a Community and Networking

15:15 Understanding Pipeline Management in Large Agencies

23:37 The Role of Technical Directors

24:54 Transitioning to Full-Time with Hyperbrew

26:49 The Evolution of Business Taglines

29:27 Understanding Adobe Partnerships

33:03 Custom Tool Projects and Automation

37:18 Navigating API Limitations in Video Tools

41:28 The Importance of Extensibility in Software

43:54 The Adobe Plugin Landscape Explained

48:59 The Development of Bolt and Open Source Contributions

55:35 The Evolution of Open Source Projects

58:51 The Benefits of Open Source Development

01:01:12 Custom vs. Off-the-Shelf Tools

01:01:13 AI in Custom Tool Development

01:04:32 The Future of Video Tools and AI

01:15:37 HyperBrew's Vision and Future Projects