A real video editor — trim, grade, caption, mix, render — with an agent beside you. Record a polished screen demo, cut on the timeline, edit the transcript, or drive the same actions from code. Every change is logged, every final render carries a receipt, and ordinary editing and rendering stay on your machine.
Free & open source (MIT) · Windows, macOS & Linux · local-first; optional online tools run only when you start them
Editing tools in the app and agent operations share one contract underneath the timeline, the transcript, the REST endpoint and the MCP tools: 308 verbs across 34 domains, all of it in the open.
Cut saves your project as you edit. Human and agent changes share an operation history you can review, undo and replay. Reopen the project to continue from its saved history; Ctrl+S can force an immediate write.
→ append-only · never rewritten · replayableUndo appends a new operation instead of erasing history, so nothing is lost. Guarded workflows checkpoint before they change the edit, and Review shows the exact diff of everything that happened since.
Cut speaks by deleting text. Transcription runs locally, then you remove silences, kill the filler words, drop a retake, or assemble a highlight reel straight out of the transcript — and it never cuts inside a word. Captions, subtitles and chapters come out of the same timing.
→ local models · word-level timing · no uploadSplit, ripple and lift delete, slip, slide and roll, linked picture and sound, multi-track layers, markers, speed changes, transitions and effects.
Layered grades on one clip, match a shot to a reference, or one-click neutralise a colour cast. Save a look and copy it across the edit.
Capture your screen with optional microphone and system audio. Polished adds smooth cursor motion, click highlights and automatic zoom, with an optional camera overlay. Keep the original and edit the result on your timeline.
Auto-reframe follows the subject instead of centre-cropping, and one window fans out into a per-platform delivery pack with a ready, needs-review, or blocked verdict.
Drop a music bed that ducks under speech, clean up a noisy voice track, set gain and pan per track, and normalise loudness on the way out.
A project-local Assets tray for this edit, plus a global library with folders, tags and favourites for everything you reuse.
Final Cut and Resolve XML, Premiere XML, OTIO, EDL, SRT, VTT, chapters, GIF, audio-only mixes, and platform export presets.
Choose Polished to guide the viewer through your screen: smooth cursor motion, visible click highlights and automatic zoom make each action easier to follow.
Choose a monitor for the full cursor styling; on Windows and macOS, window capture keeps the native pointer. Click highlights and zoom follow clicks when Cut records a usable pointer position.
Add your camera in any corner, choose a circle or rounded rectangle, and adjust its size. Available microphone and system-audio tracks stay aligned with the screen through polishing and export.
Record on Windows, macOS or Linux. Linux screen capture uses the desktop's monitor-sharing picker; camera capture uses a compatible local device.
Stop saves the original MP4. In Polished mode, Cut also adds the finished clip to your project, ready for trimming, titles, captions and sound.
Choose whether to show keystrokes or an on-video timer. Then export MP4 or GIF, or keep editing alongside the rest of your footage.
Explore the recording controls ↗
Choose the Claude Code, Codex, Grok, or Antigravity CLI already installed on your machine, then type what you want changed. The agent edits the real timeline — not an opaque generated movie, but ordinary operations you can inspect one by one. Each turn records the state it started from, exactly which operations it added, and whether it is still safe to roll the whole turn back. Edits apply directly: preview the result, read the diff, use Step back while it is safe, or ask for another change.
The usual AI editing pitch ends with a file and a promise. Cut ends with evidence: what was changed, what was measured on the finished render, and what a reviewer actually saw. Nothing here claims a pass it did not earn.
Each operation stores the actor, arguments, rationale and a replayable result. History is appended, never rewritten — so the Review rail can reconstruct the edit and undo never quietly loses a step.
→ op 0142 edit.split you → op 0143 transcript.cut_words agent · "drop the second take" checkpoint · "before captions" diff> 7 ops · 2 tracks
A final render automatically runs an instrument battery over the edit, the measured media facts and the actual output file — cuts on word boundaries, loudness, captions present, black or frozen frames, silence at the edges, duration against the edit.
→ render.final h264 · 1920x1080 cut_on_word pass lufs -14.1 pass caption_presence pass black_or_frozen none receipt> written & readable
An optional review pass samples frames from the finished file and hands them to a subscription CLI you already have — Claude, Codex, Antigravity, then Grok — alongside the measured facts. No usable CLI means a plain "not run". It never manufactures a pass.
→ verify.judge sampled 12 frames facts: lufs · silences · timings verdict approve note: shot 3 holds ~2s long state> visual review · advisory
A factual rundown of ShellX Cut v0.6.115 — no jargon, updated every release.
The timeline, command line, REST endpoint and MCP tools share the same editing engine and open project. Inspect the live schema, dispatch an edit, then review the result in Cut. Point any MCP-capable coding agent at it, copy the config out of Settings, and press Test to prove it landed on the same running engine.
full surface @
the manual
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schema/verbs.json
Free and open source under MIT. No account to install. Projects, edits and normal renders stay local; optional provider workflows use only the CLI subscriptions and services you choose.