Cutbolt video editing engine

What Cutbolt video editing engine does

Cutbolt video editing engine provides a local workflow for turning recorded footage into finished video through an AI agent. It is designed for interviews, talking-head recordings, tutorials, screen captures, presentations, and similar source material. The engine can arrange shots, trim clips by time or transcript, shorten pauses, switch between synchronized cameras, and place captions on the timeline.

Projects can include video and audio tracks, nested sequences, titles, overlays, transforms, masks, color adjustments, and transitions. Audio can be mixed and measured before delivery. Agents can preview a frame or a selected section, render locally, review the result, and export a lossless master or H.264 video. Supported timelines can also be handed off through OTIO.

Every saved edit has a revision. This lets an agent inspect changes, retry a request, resume work, or undo a prior decision. Source files remain preserved in the local workspace rather than being uploaded to a hosted service.

How it works

The engine runs on the user's machine and accepts JSON commands, a Rust library interface, or MCP over stdio. An MCP client starts the process with a workspace path, and the agent operates within that workspace for footage, projects, outputs, and background jobs. The default MCP catalog is compact; detailed commands can be requested when needed.

Rendering and MCP exports use background jobs. Local render jobs can be resumed, and individual parts of a production can be revised. Titles, graphics, and captions may remain editable scene recipes on the timeline instead of being immediately flattened into media.

Eligible H.264 and HEVC footage can be edited directly. Other supported sources are prepared automatically during queued export. Optional speech recognition and media workers run locally, but require their separately installed dependencies.

Setup and configuration

Windows and Linux are the current verification platforms. Install FFmpeg and ffprobe separately and make both available on PATH, or provide their locations through CUTBOLT_FFMPEG and CUTBOLT_FFPROBE. Cutbolt does not bundle them.

From a source checkout, installation requires Rust and a C build toolchain:

cargo install --path . --locked
cutbolt --version
cutbolt doctor

Create a dedicated workspace for media and outputs, then configure the MCP client to launch:

cutbolt --workspace /absolute/path/to/workspace mcp

Prebuilt downloads are available for Windows x64, Linux x64, and macOS ARM64. The macOS build is not a verification platform, and background jobs used by MCP exports require Windows or Linux. A Windows Claude Desktop MCP bundle is also provided. The project is listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.skulitom/cutbolt.

Tools and capabilities

The Cutbolt video editing engine MCP server supports workflows for:

• Editing recorded footage with exact timing
• Arranging video and audio tracks
• Trimming by time or transcript
• Adding captions, titles, graphics, and overlays
• Mixing and measuring audio
• Previewing frames and selected sections
• Saving revisions, retrying requests, and undoing decisions
• Rendering locally and exporting through FFmpeg
• Reusing nested sequences and handing off supported timelines through OTIO

Limitations and notes

Cutbolt is an actively developed 0.4.0 engine with explicit format and operation limits. Its timeline uses 8-bit SDR processing by default, and supported source and export formats should be checked against the current project documentation. It edits existing footage; it does not generate a new video from a text prompt.

The workflow is agent-, JSON-, or Rust-driven rather than based on a visual timeline for manual editing. It also requires a local installation and does not provide a hosted service. Windows and Linux are the verified platforms, while Windows-only engine features remain unavailable on other systems. External dependencies keep their own licenses; the original project code is MIT-licensed.