Keep Demo Videos Current After Every Release
After a release, re-render every demo whose script touches a screen that changed, replace the clips that differ, and let the renders that fail tell you which older demos the release broke. With the demos stored as scripts rather than recordings, that is an hour of waiting for renders, not a week of re-recording. This is the checklist.
What should you know before the release?
Keep a list of demo scripts with the screens each one touches. On Klevo the video page shows the script’s steps and targets, so the list can be as simple as a table in the release notes template:
| Script | Screens | Where the video is used |
|---|---|---|
| onboarding-first-project | Dashboard, New project dialog | Landing hero, welcome email 1 |
| team-invite | Team page | Welcome email 3, help article “Invite teammates” |
| reports-export | Report header, export dialog | Changelog, help article “Export” |
| billing-change-plan | Account, Billing | Help article “Change plan” |
The “where used” column is the one nobody keeps and everybody needs. Fill it in when you first embed a clip.
What is the after-release checklist?
- List the screens the release changed. The pull requests know; the release notes know.
- Re-render every script that touches those screens. On Klevo that is “render script onboarding-first-project again” in the chat, or the Render again button on each video page. Each render runs the saved steps in a fresh browser on the current app.
- Read the failures first. A render that fails names the step, shows a screenshot of the page at that moment and includes the browser console. A failed step means the release moved or renamed something the demo relied on. Decide: fix the app (it was a regression) or update the step (it was a deliberate change). Using the failed step as a bug report goes into this.
- Compare the successes. A render that succeeds may still look different: a new sidebar, a moved button. Watch the ones for high-traffic placements (landing hero, first onboarding email).
- Replace the embeds. Each render is a new video with its own link, so update the landing page, the email tool and the help articles from the “where used” column. Keep the old video until the new link is live everywhere.
- Update the list. New screens, new scripts, new placements.
What do you re-render, and what do you leave?
- Always: the landing hero, the first onboarding email, the top three help articles. These are seen by every new user.
- Usually: any clip whose script touches a changed screen.
- Rarely: changelog clips for past releases. They are dated by nature and nobody expects them to match the current UI.
How do you update one step without re-recording?
When a deliberate change breaks a step (the button is now called “New” instead of “New project”), you do not need to record the flow again. Ask the AI to record the same flow with the new wording, or edit the step in the downloaded script and ask for a render of the edited JSON; the other steps and captions stay as they were. The script format is small enough to edit by hand.
How does it become part of the release?
Put the checklist in the release template, next to “update the docs”. It takes as long as the renders take, which for a dozen scripts is about fifteen minutes of waiting. The cost that used to make demo maintenance impossible, re-recording by hand, is gone; what remains is the discipline of keeping the “where used” column.
Today the re-render is a sentence in a chat or a button. A render triggered from CI after each deploy is on Klevo’s roadmap and not built yet; when it ships, the same scripts will run without the chat.
What does a worked example look like?
Release 2.14 renames “Projects” to “Spaces” and moves the invite button into a menu.
- Scripts touching the dashboard: onboarding-first-project (fails at step 2, “New project” not found). Deliberate change: update the step to the new label, render, replace the hero and welcome email 1.
- Scripts touching the Team page: team-invite (fails at step 1, “Invite” not visible). Deliberate change: add a step to open the menu, render, replace email 3 and the help article.
- reports-export and billing-change-plan: re-rendered, identical, left alone.
Four renders, two edits, one hour including the embeds.
FAQ
Do re-renders count against the monthly limit? Yes; each one runs the browser again. Pro’s fifty a month covers a release a week for a mid-sized library; pricing has the numbers.
Can I re-render in a different format at the same time? Yes. Change the format, frame or style in the same request; formats by channel lists which to pick.
How do I find every place a video is embedded? Keep the “where used” column from the first table; nothing else will tell you.
What if staging and production differ? Record and re-render against the environment the clip documents. Most teams use staging the day before the deploy and production after.