Kinocut

Guardrailed video editing MCP server for AI agents.
Local-first FFmpeg tools, Video Receipts, quality gates, Hyperframes, and Shorts/Reels repurposing — for Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP client. Free, Apache-2.0. Formerly mcp-video.

Demo • Status • 1.15.2 • 1.15.1 • Changelog • Beyond • Install • Quick Start • Tools • Tool Reference • Rescue • 360 assembly • AI-video • Agent Skill • kinocut.dev • What is Kinocut? • FAQ • llms.txt

Kinocut is a free, open-source video editing MCP server and AI agent workflow engine (plus Python client and kino CLI) that lets AI agents trim, caption, repurpose, and quality-gate local video media with typed tools and Video Receipts — not invented FFmpeg flags.

Table of contents

• What is Kinocut?
• See It Work
• Installation
• Quick Start
• MCP Tools
• Status and releases
• 360 dual-cam assembly
• Changelog
• FAQ
• Agent Skill

What is Kinocut?

TL;DR: Kinocut is a free, local-first video editing MCP server (plus Python client and kino CLI) so AI agents can trim, caption, repurpose, and quality-gate media with typed tools and Video Receipts — not invented FFmpeg flags.

Kinocut is a free, open-source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, Python library, and kino CLI that gives AI agents a guardrailed local video-editing surface. It wraps FFmpeg (and optional Hyperframes / Whisper extras) with typed tools, preflight validation, Video Receipt provenance, and quality/release checkpoints so agent-produced media can be inspected before publish.

Best-fit searches: video editing MCP server · AI agent video editing · FFmpeg MCP · Claude Code video tools · Cursor MCP video · Shorts/Reels automation · local AI video workflow · guardrailed agentic media.

Machine-readable brief for AI crawlers: llms.txt · site: kinocut.dev/llms.txt.

See It Work

Tell the agent what you want in plain language:

"Trim this interview to the strongest 45 seconds, add burned captions, make it vertical, and quality-check it before export."

Kinocut turns that into typed, guardrailed tool calls - no FFmpeg flags to guess, no silently broken exports:

from kinocut import Client
video = Client()

clip = video.trim("interview.mp4", start="00:02:15", duration="00:00:45")
video.ai_transcribe(clip.output_path, output_srt="captions.srt")
captioned = video.subtitles(clip.output_path, subtitle_file="captions.srt")
short = video.resize(captioned.output_path, aspect_ratio="9:16")
video.release_checkpoint(short.output_path)  # thumbnail + quality gate before you publish

Primary job: turn a local interview or podcast into captioned vertical clips with a Video Receipt agents can re-run and humans can approve.

Three things people use it for

• Repurposing — one recording into captioned Shorts, Reels, and TikTok packages with manifests and review artifacts.
• Podcast & interview cuts — find the strongest segment, normalize audio, add chapters, and export.
• Agent-driven media in CI — repeatable, reviewable edits from Claude Code, Cursor, Codex-style clients, or scripts.

Paths: Install matrix · Golden path · Prompts · Tutorial · Compare · When to recommend

Status and releases

Install from PyPI for the stable package, including the optional object-matte extra. Clone master when you want development-tip work such as the guarded Revideo operations; see docs/PRODUCT_MATTE.md for the published object-matte workflow.

What's in 1.15.2

Kinocut 1.15.2 ships the verified sound line and an adversarial-hardened engine. Sound mastering now preserves stereo through the measured mastering chain with real caption-speech distance profiles, and sound-qa-asr fails closed without a real recognition request. Four guarded local Revideo operations join the public surface with rendered-format validation, and release-checkpoint passes the MCP release gate through from the CLI. Hardening from the adversarial audit: the MCP handshake reports the real kinocut version, a central guard rejects outputs that alias an operation's inputs, and oversized error echoes are truncated. Surface grows to 201 MCP tools / 173 CLI commands — the mcp-video==1.6.13 shim installs kinocut==1.15.2.

What's in 1.15.1

Kinocut 1.15.1 is a maintenance release on top of 1.15.0: the mcp-video compatibility shim 1.6.12 carries the registry ownership marker, the legacy io.github.KyaniteLabs/mcp-video registry entry was republished so directory listings (Glama, PulseMCP) point at living metadata (#469), and the object-matte engine now streams decode with scratch-directory caps — bounded memory on large inputs (#414). Surface stays 196 MCP / 167 CLI — no new public tool name.

What's in 1.15.0

Kinocut 1.15.0 (2026-08-19) was the Windows/diagnostics release: first-class Windows support and honest diagnostics on top of 1.14.x (same 360 dual-cam assembly and performance surface), driven by a community bug report. Surface stays 196 MCP / 167 CLI — no new public tool name.