How to edit a video with AI: your first edit in Sharpy

What does Sharpy do when you give it a recording?

Sharpy is an AI video editor that makes the whole edit, not one task at a time. It works in five steps, each a tool you can watch or leave to run:

Studies the reference (read_format), if you gave one: its sentences, who holds the floor when, and one question for you.
Builds the structure (set_format): the format's order and the role each part of a recording can play in it.
Reads your recording (read_recording): every word, pause and shot, in the format's terms.
Lays out the beats (plan_beats): your material in the format's order, plus a short list of words worth confirming.
Cuts, renders and checks (assemble): the finished file, every check run on it, and a verdict.

Run end to end on its maker's own recording, this laid out eleven beats, named three places where his material fell short of the reference, raised fifteen words to confirm, and produced a file in which all 21 lines of the script are heard in order, none chopped or repeated.

How do you start your first edit?

Open the recording. Drag it onto Sharpy's window. Picture and sound land on the timeline together, linked, and the edit is saved in your Movies folder under Sharpy, where the start screen lists it next time. Every change is saved the moment it is made.
Say what you are making. One sentence is enough, such as "a 60-second vertical short, upbeat, for Instagram". Sharpy writes the brief from it, asks at most one question, and asks you for the length rather than inventing one.
Give it a reference, if you have one. A video in the style you want tells Sharpy more than any description. The next lesson, editing in the style of a video you love, covers this.
Decide the finished piece. File ▸ Decide the Finished Piece… sets the shape (a width and height, a ratio such as 9:16 with its long edge, or a destination) and the quality (ProRes, H.264 or HEVC). Sharpy never guesses these.
Let it edit. It reads, cuts, renders and checks the result before you see it.

The window is one way in. Your own AI agent, such as Claude or Codex, can drive the same edit through Sharpy's MCP server (setting that up takes one command), and the sharpy command in Terminal runs it from a script with no window open. All three work on the same edit: when the agent cuts, the window shows it, and its steps join the window's undo history.

Which questions does Sharpy ask before it cuts?

Only the ones it cannot answer by measuring. An unanswered question stops the cut, with the answer it needs beside it:

The question	Why it asks	What your answer changes
What shape and quality?	The finished piece is your call	The size, codec and data rate of every render
Cut false starts, or keep them?	Some stumbles are part of the delivery	Whether they go
Tighten dead air, or keep it?	Pace is a choice	Whether long stops are shortened
Mirror the picture?	Mirroring is a choice about the piece, not the camera	Which way round you appear
Drop a script line you never said?	The script and the recording disagree	Whether the line goes or the edit waits
Are these words right?	The two speech engines heard them differently	The captions, and any cut beside them

Everything else it decides from what it measures, and says why. Each question it does have to ask is recorded, because the aim is an editor that needs you less: your part moves from during the edit to before it.

How do you check the edit and change what you disagree with?

Every decision goes into the edit decision list with its reason, and a decision with no reason does not render. In the window, the Why tab (⇧⌘Y) shows every cut beside the basis it was made on and how strong that basis is. What an edit decision list is explains the idea.

A man on a sofa in the evening, headphones round his neck, points a pencil at a laptop on his knees, a notebook of tick marks on the cushion beside him. — Check the edit by its reasons: every cut is listed with why, so you only change the ones you disagree with.

To change something, say so in plain words to the agent: "keep the second take of the intro", "leave the pause before the last line alone". Or press ⌘Z: when you undo a step the agent made, Sharpy keeps it as a correction, with the decision it rested on, and reads it before proposing again, so you never make the same correction twice. Ask for the same thing three times and Sharpy offers to make it a standing rule, such as "the cinematic look, every time".

File ▸ Stakes says what a mistake would cost. At routine stakes, Sharpy's measured choices ship; at higher stakes, more of them wait for you. Anything held waits at export, each item with a tick: let them all through at once, or tick the ones that may ship.

How do you take over by hand?

Sharpy is a full editor as well. In Settings, choose Premiere Pro's keys or Final Cut Pro's, taken from Adobe's and Apple's own shortcut lists, so your hands already know it. In the WORDS tab, select words and press Delete to cut them from picture and sound together; right-click and choose Put Back to restore them. The review list goes through every filler, repeat and long stop with Hear, Cut or Shorten, and Keep. On the timeline, ripple, roll, slip and slide work as they do in Premiere.

You and the agent edit the same project at the same time, and each sees the other's changes as they happen. If the agent has already trimmed the clip you were about to split, your change is refused with the reason rather than applied to the wrong thing. Editing by hand in Sharpy is the full lesson.

How do you export the finished video?

The export panel's first line, "As decided", follows the shape and quality you set at the start. Or pick one of eight destinations (vertical, vertical-master, square, portrait, widescreen, widescreen-4k, broadcast or master), each of which sets the shape, codec and loudness together. Tick the captions box to get .srt and .vtt files, written from the captions on the picture, so a word you corrected by hand is corrected in the file too.

Beside every render, Sharpy writes the credits the music and footage it used are owed, ready to paste into the video's description, and it can hand the edit to Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve as FCPXML, and to Premiere Pro as a CMX 3600 EDL or OpenTimelineIO. Exporting the finished video is the last lesson of the course.

What should you expect on the base Mac mini M4?

Sharpy needs Apple silicon (M4 or later), 16 GB of memory and macOS 26 or later, and every model it uses runs on that Mac. Measured on the base Mac mini M4 with 16 GB, it watches footage 1.7 times faster than real time, makes a transcript in 4.9 minutes for every hour of sound, and renders a 1080×1920 timeline at 903 frames a second. Recordings of up to four hours fit in its 16 GB. Nothing uploads, so there is no queue, and nothing is metered: one plan with unlimited edits.

Frequently asked questions

How do I edit a video with AI?

Give an AI video editor your recording and tell it what you are making; it makes the cuts and you check them. In Sharpy that is one dragged file and one sentence, and every cut arrives with its reason.

Can AI edit my videos for me?

Yes. Sharpy makes the whole edit itself, from structure to checked render, and asks only what it cannot measure, such as the finished shape. You keep the final say over every cut.

Is automatic video editing good enough to publish?

Sharpy checks every render before you see it: a cut inside a spoken word blocks the render, and anything it is unsure of is held for you. Watch it once before it goes out, as you would any edit.

Does Sharpy upload my recording?

No. Every model Sharpy uses runs on your Mac, so the recording never leaves it.

What if I disagree with a cut?

Say so in plain words, or undo it. An undone step is kept as a correction, so the agent does not make the same choice again.