cut-as-code

The open skill stack for agentic video editing.

Cut-as-code turns video editing into an inspectable, code-driven workflow you can drive with AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and OpenClaw. The agent proposes and records editing decisions as readable files; you review them in browser pages and template galleries, approve the work, and then render the final videos — all free, open source (MIT), and with nothing uploaded to a cloud service.

• ✂️ Cut — reviewed keep/drop decisions and a compact first cut.
• 🎨 Color grade — candidate looks to review, then a baked LUT.
• 💬 Captions — word-timed, preset styles with optional karaoke.
• 🃏 Graphic motion cards — titles, lower thirds, stats, quotes, and calls to action.
• 📱 To TikTok/YouTube shorts — extract moments and reframe them for 9:16 vertical.

Demos

1. 2h video to TikTok/YouTube shorts

Prompt: For [video-path], use /video-understand, /video-to-shorts, /video-add-captions, and /video-add-content-cards.

Agent: Proposes short-form candidates, and displays captions and content cards with graphic motion for your review, and delivers the final edit.

Short 01	Short 02	Short 03	Short 04
short-01.mp4 short-01.mp4	short-02.mp4 short-02.mp4	short-03.mp4 short-03.mp4	short-04.mp4 short-04.mp4

Original video: Jensen Huang: NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026 Keynote

2. Cut, caption & add graphics to a raw interview

Prompt: For [video-path], use /video-understand, /video-cut, /video-add-captions, and /video-add-content-cards.

Agent: Displays a few captions and content cards candidates for your review, then delivers the final edit.

Original video: Elon Musk : How to Build the Future

3. Color grading

Prompt: For [video-path], use /video-color-grade, and /video-edit-compare.

Agent: Displays a few candidate grading options for your review, then do the final grading.

Original video: DJI MAVIC PRO 2 Ungraded Footage to practice grading

Skills

Each directory under skills/ is a self-contained agent skill. Its SKILL.md is both the agent playbook and the specification for that skill.

Skill	Purpose
/video-understand	Probe media, generate a word-level transcript, analyze speech, and build reusable evidence for downstream skills.
/video-cut	Create reviewed keep/drop decisions, generate the canonical timeline, render a compact first cut, and verify its boundaries.
/video-color-grade	Assess footage, generate named looks, review the alternatives, record a selection, and bake or apply a portable LUT.
/video-add-captions	Render preset-driven, word-timed captions with optional karaoke highlighting.
/video-add-content-cards	Add selective transcript-timed titles, lower thirds, statistics, lists, quotes, chapter cards, and calls to action.
/video-to-shorts	Find and extract approved horizontal shorts, then optionally create reviewed 9:16 vertical deliveries.
/video-edit-compare	Compare the original source with the actual final delivery on the original source clock.

Quick Start

Install the skills into your agent:

npx skills add WhiteTowerAI/cut-as-code

Or install them individually from ClawHub:

npm install -g clawhub
clawhub install @whitetowerai/<skill-name>

Then point your agent at a video with prompts such as:

For [video-path], use /video-understand, /video-cut, /video-add-captions, and then /video-add-content-cards.

Note: /video-understand is a prerequisite for /video-cut, /video-to-shorts, /video-add-captions, and /video-add-content-cards. Run it first so downstream skills share the same media metadata, transcript, analysis, and timeline.

Project Layout

my-video-project/
|-- START-HERE.md
|-- input/                        # original user-provided media
|   `-- original-video.mp4
|-- review/                       # summaries, stills, contact sheets, previews
|   |-- 00-video-understanding/
|   |-- 01-cut/
|   |-- 02-color-grade/
|   |-- 03-content-cards/
|   |-- 04-edit-compare/
|   |-- 05-captions/
|   `-- 06-shorts/
|-- final/                        # main delivery and derivative shorts
|   |-- final-video.mp4
|   `-- shorts/
|       |-- short-001-horizontal.mp4
|       `-- short-001-vertical.mp4
`-- work/                         # intermediate files for the agents themselves
    |-- project.json
    |-- timeline.json
    |-- understand/
    |-- cut/
    |-- color-grade/
    |-- content-cards/
    |-- edit-compare/
    |-- captions/
    |-- shorts/
    |-- render/
    `-- cache/                    # disposable, regenerable files

Durable editing decisions and approval records must never live only in work/cache/.

• work/project.json is the shared manifest: available sequences, active operations and dependencies, operation status, integer revision numbers, based_on revision checks, review outputs, render contributions, and the final render path and status. Revision checks prevent an operation from silently rendering against stale upstream decisions.
• work/timeline.json is the canonical source-to-program mapping. Time values are in seconds and ranges are half-open [start_s, end_s). The V1 model stays small and inspectable — chronological clips from one source with linear positive speed, no OpenTimelineIO required.

Roadmap

Planned work — these items are not yet available.

• Make skills easier to install and update.
• Improve UI & UX design.
• Continue expanding the collection of composable video-editing skills.