Drop in raw footage. Describe the edit. Watch the real timeline update — cuts, captions, beat sync, motion graphics — while your files never leave your machine.
MIT License · macOS / Windows / Linux · Electron + React + ffmpeg
The screenshot above is a real session: footage imported, transcribed locally, silence removed, captions generated from the transcript, and the video track re-cut to the beat grid of a music track — all driven through the tool API, all undoable with ⌘Z.
Most AI video tools generate fake footage or ship your files to a server. Cutboard is the opposite:
- Edits real footage. Never generates video. Nothing enters the output that you didn't import. The agent is an editor, not a slot machine.
- Local-first. Originals stay where they are. Transcription, scene detection, and beat detection run on your machine (whisper.cpp, ffmpeg, local ONNX). Cloud models are opt-in per capability and clearly labeled.
- The timeline is the source of truth. Every agent edit is a validated operation in an append-only log — exact undo/redo, crash recovery, and MCP clients can edit the project even with the window closed.
- One tool set, every interface. The built-in chat and any MCP client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor) drive the same 30+ typed tools.
| Footage understanding | Word-level transcript (whisper.cpp), scene detection with keyframes, optional VLM scene descriptions — all searchable (FTS5 + local embeddings). |
| Rough cut | Removes pauses and repeated takes, keeps your order, reports the duration. One atomic undo. |
| Transcript editing | "Cut to the brushes whenever I mention them" — edit by what was said, timed in milliseconds. |
| Captions | Serif / bold / karaoke presets generated from word timings; styled, placed, batched. |
| Beat sync | Local DSP beat detection (BPM, grid, downbeats, sections) → cuts land on the grid with per-section density. Verified at ±1 frame. |
| Motion graphics | The agent writes sandboxed scene-tree compositions (lower thirds, counters, title cards) timed to speech. Edited only via chat, with a look-and-fix loop. |
| Reference style | Analyze a reference video's cut rhythm and color stats; copy the properties you choose. The reference footage never enters your edit. |
| Effects & keyframes | Brightness/contrast/saturation/blur with keyframed animation; speed ramps and time remap. |
| Export | Presets for TikTok/Reels/Shorts, YouTube, Square — hardware-encoded (VideoToolbox/NVENC/QSV/AMF) with a mixed, ducked audio track. Frame-accurate: output matches the preview. Plus OTIO hand-off to Resolve/Premiere/FCP. |
git clone <your-fork-url> cutboard && cd cutboard
pnpm install
pnpm fetch:ffmpeg # bundled LGPL ffmpeg/ffprobe (optional — falls back to PATH)
pnpm dev # apps/desktop → Electron dev server- Create a project and import media (⌘I).
- Wait for analysis — proxies, transcript (
✓ analyzedbadge). The first ASR model download is ~150 MB; manage models in Settings → AI. - Ask the agent — open the AI chat tab and try the prompts in
docs/prompts/. Configure a provider (Anthropic / OpenAI / Google, or run fully local with Ollama) in the chat's ⚙ AI settings.
Verified smoke run on Apple Silicon: 12.6s speech clip → analyzed in ~20s (base.en), silence removal cut 2.5s, 8 karaoke caption cards, 121 BPM detected on a 120 BPM click track, 20 beat-synced cuts, 1080p export.
Cutboard ships a local MCP server (loopback only, per-install bearer token). Enable it in Settings → MCP, then:
# Claude Code
claude mcp add --transport http cutboard http://127.0.0.1:8629/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer <token from Settings>"
# Codex / Cursor / Claude Desktop — see the copy-paste snippets in Settings → MCP,
# or use the stdio shim: npx cutboard-mcpPrivacy: external agents receive text (transcripts, scene descriptions, timeline JSON)
and frames only when they call captureFrame — never your source files.
┌─────────────────────────── Desktop app (one install) ───────────────────────────┐
│ Renderer (React editor, canvas compositor, sandboxed motion-graphics iframe) │
│ ▲ typed IPC (contextBridge, zod-validated, sandboxed preload) │
│ Main process — source of truth │
│ ├─ Project service SQLite (WAL) + append-only op log, undo/redo │
│ ├─ Tool registry 30+ zod-typed tools — chat and MCP share one catalog │
│ ├─ Agent runtime Vercel AI SDK → Anthropic / OpenAI / Google / Ollama │
│ ├─ MCP server 127.0.0.1 Streamable HTTP + token + stdio shim │
│ ├─ Job manager resumable ingest/export queue (SQLite-backed) │
│ └─ Analysis whisper.cpp ASR · scene detect · beats DSP · embeddings │
│ Sidecars: bundled ffmpeg/ffprobe (LGPL) · hidden render window → hw encode │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Timeline state lives in the main process and changes only through ops (item.trim,
item.split, batch, …). The UI, the built-in agent, and MCP clients are all just
clients of the same op log — which is why undo works everywhere and agents can edit
headless. Core op semantics (ripple, split, trim, inverses) are pure TypeScript with
46 unit tests (packages/editor-core).
apps/desktop Electron app (main / preload / renderer)
apps/mcp-shim stdio ⇄ loopback-HTTP bridge for MCP clients
packages/schema zod data model + op catalog (single source of truth)
packages/editor-core pure op engine: apply/invert, ripple, snapping, history
packages/tools tool catalog shared by chat + MCP
packages/renderer canvas compositor + motion-graphics runtime + validators
packages/agent system prompt, provider notes
scripts/ logo generator, ffmpeg/whisper fetchers
docs/ decisions, prompts, screenshots
pnpm --dir apps/desktop dist # signed builds need certs; unsigned otherwise
pnpm --dir apps/desktop dist:dir # fast unpacked build (mac verified)Config in apps/desktop/electron-builder.yml (dmg / NSIS / AppImage). Bundled ffmpeg is
LGPL — no GPL components; see THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md for the
codec distribution notes.
Shipped: all ten desktop milestones — see docs/DECISIONS.md for
every resolved decision and docs/prompts/ for copy-paste agent prompts.
Next up, in rough order: mask tracking + SAM-based background removal (ONNX sidecar),
project bundle portability (per-project project.db), batch-over-folder flows, signed +
notarized installers, stock media search (Pexels/Freesound).
PRs welcome. pnpm test (vitest), pnpm typecheck, pnpm lint should all pass —
packages/editor-core changes need tests. Keep the privacy rule sacred: nothing leaves
the machine unless the user explicitly configured a cloud provider for that capability.
MIT — see LICENSE. The wordmark embeds Montserrat (SIL OFL 1.1) as outlines. Not affiliated with any commercial product.