BashCut

A native macOS video editor that coding agents can drive.
Everything the UI does, Claude Code and Codex can do through the bashcut CLI or MCP.

Download · TestFlight beta · Docs · Automation · Plugins · Agent kit · Issues

Tiếng Việt

BashCut editing the sample project: media library, viewer with picture in picture and a caption, Inspector, layered timeline and the agent dock

About

BashCut is a native macOS video editor built on AVFoundation, with a Claude Code / Codex terminal docked beside the
timeline. Preview and export share one composition engine, so what you see is what you export. Projects are
plain JSON next to your footage: agents and scripts read and edit them through the same atomic, undoable edit
operations the UI uses.

BashCut is under active development: the M0 foundation is accepted on real footage and most of the editor and
agent features (M1–M3, M5) are in place. See implementation status for what is
verified and what is left.

Use the AI you already pay for

No extra AI bill: BashCut works with the subscriptions and apps you already have.

You have	How BashCut uses it
Claude subscription (Pro / Max)	The Claude tab in the agent dock runs the real Claude Code CLI with your login. BashCut never passes `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, so your plan is used, not API credits
ChatGPT subscription (Plus / Pro)	The Codex tab runs the real Codex CLI with your ChatGPT login
Claude Desktop / Codex app	Point them at BashCut: `bashcut agent setup claude` or `bashcut agent setup codex` installs the editing skills and the `bashcut` MCP server, so they edit the open project from outside the app
Any other model (Gemini, GPT, Grok, Mistral, Groq, OpenRouter, a local or OpenAI-compatible server)	Install the Director plugin: a chat agent inside BashCut with your own API key, with thinking levels (`off` / `low` / `medium` / `high`) for reasoning models

Whichever you pick, the agent edits through the same undoable commands as the UI: every change lands in History,
shows in Show Changes and can be undone. See Automation.

What's inside

Layered timeline: linked audio, sections, snapping, beat grid, split/trim/move, gaps, freeze frames, constant
speed and ramps, keyframes, transitions
Viewer and source viewer with In/Out, Insert/Overwrite, safe area and compare
Captions and text with presets, SRT import, Vietnamese and English
Color: LUTs, exposure, contrast, saturation and adjustment layers
Audio: volume, fades, ducking under speech, loudness, voiceover recording, source-aligned waveforms
Review checks, history, autosave with recovery, external-change reload and conflict handling
H.264 export queue with burned-in captions; OTIO export
Agent dock with real Claude, Codex and Shell terminals, plus the
agent kit of editing skills
bashcut CLI and MCP server: every UI action and dialog, with dry runs and revision checks
Out-of-process plugins for transcription, voice, beats and loudness, from the
plugin registry

Install

Requires macOS 14 or later.

Homebrew

brew install --cask dongnguyenvie/tap/bashcut

This installs BashCut.app into /Applications and links the bashcut CLI and bashcut-mcp server into
Homebrew's bin, so agents in any terminal can drive the app. Update with brew upgrade --cask bashcut; remove
with brew uninstall --cask bashcut (add --zap to also delete settings and caches).

Download a release

Download BashCut-<version>.dmg (or .zip) from the latest release,
open it and drag BashCut to Applications. Builds are signed with Developer ID and notarized by Apple; check a download
against the release's SHA256SUMS with shasum -a 256 -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS. To use the CLI from a terminal, link it yourself:

sudo ln -s /Applications/BashCut.app/Contents/MacOS/bashcut /usr/local/bin/bashcut
sudo ln -s /Applications/BashCut.app/Contents/MacOS/bashcut-mcp /usr/local/bin/bashcut-mcp

TestFlight

Join the public beta on TestFlight (needs the TestFlight app). The
TestFlight build is the sandboxed Mac App Store build: it runs only the plugins bundled with the app, and its
bundled CLI cannot run from a regular terminal.

Or build BashCut from source, below.

How to Build

Requires macOS 14+, Xcode with Swift 6, and network access for the first package resolution.

scripts/run.sh

This builds with SwiftPM, packages build/BashCut.app, signs it with the first Apple Development identity in
your keychain (or BASHCUT_SIGN_IDENTITY) so macOS keeps folder-access grants across rebuilds, and opens it. The
app executable is BashCutApp and the bundled CLI is bashcut, avoiding a name collision on case-insensitive
disks.

To try a change against every timeline case, generate the sample project shown
above (needs ffmpeg):

scripts/sample-project.py

For Xcode, install XcodeGen >= 2.46, then run scripts/generate-project.sh and open BashCut.xcodeproj
(generated from project.yml). Xcode builds the string catalog; the SwiftPM launcher copies equivalent .strings
resources. The UI follows the system language.

Verify

scripts/verify.sh build
scripts/verify.sh test
scripts/verify.sh perf       # 20 synthetic clips, ~30 seconds, 1080×1920
scripts/verify.sh lint       # requires SwiftLint
scripts/verify.sh xcode test # regenerates and tests the Xcode project (requires XcodeGen)

Pure model tests also run on their own with cd Packages/BashCutCore && swift test. Tests never use the real
video workspace or agent CLIs, and package downloads happen at dependency resolution, not in tests.

Related repositories

Two other repositories are part of BashCut. Contributions are welcome in each:

Repository	What it holds	Contribute there
bashcut-plugins	The plugin registry (`registry.json`) and its plugins, such as Silence Markers and VieNeu TTS	New plugins and fixes to existing ones. See Writing plugins
bashcut-agent-kit	Editing skills for Claude Code and Codex (footage survey, beat cuts, audio mix, captions, colour, effects, voiceover…). BashCut ships them and loads them in its agent tabs	Editing know-how that agents should follow. See its README › Writing skills

Changes to the editor itself, its commands and the plugin API belong in this repository.

Documentation

Documentation index: guides, reference and design specs
Automation: CLI and MCP and the generated
command reference
Project format
Implementation status
CONTRIBUTING.md: build layout and one-file templates (agent providers, model adapters,
commands, capabilities, timeline formats)
CHANGELOG.md

License

MIT. See LICENSE.