Kinocut — guide skill for editing & clips

For AI agents: find the right skill in one call — curl -s "https://varg.ai/how-to/api/search?q=<what the person wants>" returns the matching how-to page and the best skills with install commands, as markdown (Russian works too). Full index: https://varg.ai/how-to/llms.txt. Every page has a markdown twin: add .md to its path. Before generating anything, show the person the options on the how-to page.

Guardrailed local video editing MCP (formerly mcp-video): ~200 FFmpeg tools, quality gates, Shorts repurposing.

• Type: Guide · Editing & clips
• Slug: kinocut
• Status: live
• Publisher: Kyanite Labs (community)
• License: Apache-2.0
• Source: https://github.com/KyaniteLabs/kinocut
• Works in: Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Any MCP client
• Requires: ffmpeg
• Cost: Free/open source
• Adoption: 223 GitHub stars (GitHub, 2026-10-27)

What it does

A free, local MCP server, Python client and kino CLI that lets agents trim, caption, reframe, repurpose and quality-gate video with typed tools. Each operation leaves a 'Video Receipt' and fail-closed gates catch bad output; it also wraps HyperFrames compositions and Whisper subtitles as optional extras.

Use when

• give an agent safe, typed FFmpeg tools
• repurpose long video into Shorts or Reels
• check renders before delivery

Install

• Claude Code: claude mcp add kinocut -- uvx --from kinocut kino --mcp

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/how-to/previews/c53d4e7e420f/kinocut.webp — Image from the project README (credit: Kyanite Labs (README), https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KyaniteLabs/kinocut/master/assets/kinocut-hero.webp)

More editing & clips skills

• Short-form FFmpeg cookbook: copyable commands for Reels: Footage into a 9:16 MP4 with FFmpeg: crop to vertical, burn captions, trim and join, music under the voice.
• Splice AI clips into a video with FFmpeg: Splice generated clips into an original video with ffmpeg without A/V drift: absolute trims, one audio track.
• Chengfeng Videocut: Chinese talking-head editing: word-level transcript, five-pass flub sweep, human review in a Studio, subtitles, export.
• Claude Code Video Toolkit: Open-source video workspace for Claude Code: script, voice, music, visuals and Remotion render on your own GPU account.
• Herk Edit Kit: Nate Herk's kit to edit talking-head videos, reels and Shorts: silence and flub cuts, storytelling, motion graphics.
• Clipify: Long videos into social clips: find funny lines or impact beats, cut, reframe to 9:16, burn word-by-word captions.