The "chat story" format — Shorts with zero seconds of video

Not every Shorts format needs a video track. Vertix's "chat story" mode sits as its own button in the menu, next to "Topic Short," but it's really a completely different output format: not a narrator over footage, but two people texting each other on a phone screen. A chat header, a messenger wallpaper, message bubbles popping up one by one — nothing that resembles a filmed shot.

You write the lines, not the AI

This is the key difference from topic mode: there, the model writes the script and you approve it by ear. Chat story flips that. A form opens in a mini app, and you type every line yourself, marking for each one which of two speakers — "A" or "B" — says it. The model writes zero words here — it only voices what you've already written.

Each speaker gets their own, separately chosen voice

Since a conversation has two participants, they need two distinct voices — otherwise it's unclear who's replying to whom. Vertix doesn't guess this automatically from the content of a line; you assign it explicitly: you pick a voice from the bot's synthesis catalog for "Speaker A" and a separate one for "Speaker B." That's what makes it sound like a conversation instead of one voice talking to itself.

No footage at all — and nothing to pick as a background

Topic mode's entire background-choice screen — stock footage, your own video, the audio-reactive waveform — exists specifically because that format needs visuals to sit under the narration. Chat story skips that step entirely: the only visual is the chat interface itself, which the bot renders on its own. Nothing to search for, download, or pick.

How this differs from topic mode — a format, not a sub-mode

It's worth being precise here: chat story isn't just another way to tell the same kind of clip. It's a completely different output format, with its own input mechanic (a mini-app form instead of typing a topic to the bot), its own voicing (two independent voices instead of one narrator), and its own visuals (a messenger UI instead of any footage at all). The button sits next to "Topic Short" in the menu and needs the same access level, but it leads down a fully separate build path.

What's worth knowing about the current version

The format is still young, and it honestly carries a couple of first-version limits: unlike topic mode, there's no listen-before-you-build step here — the voiceover goes straight into the render once you confirm. And the "rebuild with the same text, different settings" button ("♻️ Rebuild") isn't available for chat story yet — if something about the finished result doesn't land, it's currently easier to write the conversation again than to tweak an already-built one.

For stories that naturally live inside a conversation — an argument, a confession, an awkward moment in a chat thread — this is a format that doesn't need to be forced into a narrator-over-footage shape. It was built to be its own thing, not another preset.