Dev exposes video editor timeline as MCP server so Claude can cut a real NLE with 61 tools
MaintenanceInitial15 · reddit · 2026-09-10
A developer building a desktop video editor exposed its entire toolset as a local MCP server (61 tools), letting Claude Opus 5 in VS Code drive a real NLE: split, trim, keyframe, caption, grade, and export via ffmpeg. Key design: the agent and the mouse share one undo stack — everything the AI does lands as an ordinary clip on an ordinary timeline, so mistakes get fixed by dragging instead of re-prompting. One prompt ("add captions and set caption contrast") grew the timeline from 2 tracks/2 clips to 3 tracks/4 clips; the contrast step worked surprisingly well because inspectcolor measured real pixels and the model added an outline and shadow to the near-white background. The author also asks the community about tool granularity: do 61 narrow tools make selection too wide, and does merging them help or hurt?
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