Free guide · Video editing

Claude edits my videos. Here's how, free.

I record on my phone, drop the file in a folder and ask Claude Code to edit it. It cuts the pauses, adds captions and motion graphics in my brand colours, and hands back a finished vertical video. These are the steps, in the order I did them.

Claude CodeHyperFrames by HeyGen7 steps£0 in skills

claude-edits-short · preview

The same frame after Claude's edit: a 'Claude edited this video' title, a set-up cost tag and the words Claude Code behind George

A frame of George's raw recording, before editing

Before After Claude

Drag the handle · the same frame, before and after Claude

What you're building

A small film crew. It lives in a folder.

Claude Code does the work. HyperFrames, HeyGen's free video framework, gives it the skills: cutting, captions, motion graphics and rendering. You talk to it in plain English.

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Before you start

Don't get conned. Plenty of creators and AI gurus will sell you a secret skill pack, a template bundle or a paid community for this. You don't need any of it.

The skills are free and open source, the setup is a handful of commands, and every one of them is on this page. Anyone telling you it needs a course is selling the course.

The setup

7 steps. The last one is the one nobody mentions.

01STEP

Get Claude Code ready.

You need a paid Claude plan and Claude Code, the version of Claude that works with the files on your computer. Use the Code tab in the Claude desktop app, or install it in your terminal.

A Claude Pro or Max plan
Node.js, for the npx command
ffmpeg, which handles the video files

$ curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

$ brew install node ffmpeg

On a MacThe second line needs Homebrew. On Windows, install Node.js and ffmpeg from their websites, then carry on.

02STEP

Find the skills.

Vercel built a free tool that searches skills.sh, the public directory of Claude skills. Ask it for video and it lists what's out there, with install counts. That's how I found HyperFrames.

Check who made a skill before you install it. HyperFrames comes from HeyGen, a real video company, and the code is public on GitHub.

Terminal

$ 
Install with npx skills add <owner/repo@skill>
 
101-skills/superpowers@ai-video-generation 745K installs
heygen-com/hyperframes@general-video 534.6K installs
└ https://skills.sh/heygen-com/hyperframes/general-video
heygen-com/hyperframes@product-launch-video 445.7K installs
prime-skills/runcomfy-agent-skills@video-edit 433.4K installs

$ npx skills find video

03STEP

Install HyperFrames.

Run this in the folder you'll use for videos. When the picker opens, choose Core Skills. The rest install themselves the first time Claude needs them.

Prefer a plugin? The 2 commands underneath install the same thing as a Claude Code plugin that keeps itself up to date.

Check it workedOpen Claude Code in that folder and type /hyperframes. If Claude tells you what HyperFrames can do, you're set.

$ npx skills add heygen-com/hyperframes

Or as a plugin

$ claude plugin marketplace add heygen-com/hyperframes $ claude plugin install hyperframes@hyperframes

04STEP

Make a video folder and drop your recording in.

Create a folder called VIDEO. Record on your phone, then put the file in it. I export straight out of the Photos app. You can drop in several recordings and let Claude work through them.

Open Claude Code in that folder, so everything it makes lands in one place.

VIDEO/

video-output-1.mov114 SEC

video-output-2.mov55 SEC

teleprompter-take.mov140 SEC

ten-second-ai-test/CLAUDE MADE

BRIEF.md

renders/FINISHED MP4

The edit

Claude does the cutting. You do the talking.

It transcribes every word, cuts the pauses and the ums, and plans the captions and graphics around what you said. The old cutting room, without the scissors.

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05STEP

Ask Claude to edit it.

This is close to word for word what I typed, nothing clever. Claude picks up the HyperFrames skills on its own and asks a couple of questions before it starts.

Brand coloursPaste your hex codes into the prompt, or give it your website address and ask it to take the colours and fonts from there.

Edit this video. I need it to be really viral. Use my brand colours. Make sure you cut out the pauses and the ums.

06STEP

Let the first one take its time.

The first edit is slow. Claude transcribes, plans the cut, builds the captions and scenes, then renders. It opens a preview called HyperFrames Studio so you can check it before the final file is made.

My 56.5-second short took 22 minutes to render
A 114-second one took 18 minutes, once the folder was set up
The finished MP4 lands in the project's renders folder

What I recorded140 seconds

What Claude made56.5 seconds

Step 07 · The bit nobody tells you

Let Claude organise its folder. Every edit gets faster.

After my first couple of edits I asked Claude to look at the whole VIDEO folder and write itself a set of instructions. It made 4 files. CLAUDE.md is short and gets read every time. The other 3 only get opened when the job needs them, so Claude stops working out the folder from scratch on every video.

07STEP

Paste this once your first edit is done.

Look at everything in this VIDEO folder and the edits we've done so far. Write a short CLAUDE.md that says what this folder is and where things live, then instruction.md (how an edit runs, step by step), reference.md (my brand, caption styles and which tools to reuse) and rules.md (what never to do, and the problems we hit). Keep CLAUDE.md short and point it at the other 3, so they only get read when they're needed.

VIDEO/CLAUDE.md

fewer tokens to plan the same edit1.14M → 593K tokens

fewer back-and-forth steps19 → 11.5 turns

faster to a finished plan141 → 71 seconds

less spent per edit$0.65 → $0.37 a plan

How we measured it, 13 October 2026: the same planning prompt, run in Claude Code on 2 identical copies of my VIDEO folder, one with the 4 files and one without. 2 runs each on the same model, averaged. That is about 47,000 fewer uncached tokens every time Claude plans an edit. Planning only, no rendering; cost at API list prices.

Made this way

Some of what's come out of the folder.

Frames from 2 shorts Claude edited for me this month. Same folder, same skills, same kind of prompt.

Frame: a terminal graphic typing a rule, above George — Claude mods · 0:17

Frame: a copy and paste graphic, above George walking — 10-second test · 0:36

Frame: a workflow graphic, above George — 10-second test · 1:06

Frame: a weekly task grid graphic, above George — 10-second test · 1:24

Frame: a how we help graphic, above George — Claude mods · 0:52

HyperFrames Studio · the preview Claude opens before it renders

HyperFrames Studio showing a video project with its timeline of scenes and captions

Get AI Powers

Video is one job. Claude can take on a lot more of your week.

If you want to see what else Claude can do in your business, from giving you hours back to cutting the subscriptions you pay for, that's what we do. We don't build things for you and walk away. We work as the AI operations manager in your team, so you keep driving the business while we keep it moving forward with AI.

1-to-1 coaching

Sessions on your own work, so Claude fits the way your business runs. You learn it by doing it.

Cohorts

A small group of business owners learning Claude together, with a set plan and homework each week.

Operating systems, built with you

We build your Claude setup alongside you: the skills, the instructions and the folders. You keep all of it.

We build with you, not for you.

Next step

Want to see what it looks like for your business.

Book a call with Joey. Tell him what eats your week and he'll show you where Claude fits, and which of the 3 ways of working with us makes sense.

Book a call with Joey →

Claymation Claude at a film editing bench with scissors

Sources

HyperFrames by HeyGen, install commands: github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes
Vercel's skills CLI: github.com/vercel-labs/skills
Install counts from the skills.sh search for "video", 13 October 2026: skills.sh
Claude Code documentation: code.claude.com/docs
Render times from HyperFrames' own render logs on George's 2 shorts, 12 October 2026: 1,327 seconds for 56.5 seconds of video, 1,095 seconds for 114 seconds.
Get AI Powers measurement, 13 October 2026: 4 headless Claude Code runs (Sonnet 5.5), same prompt, same folder with and without the 4 files. Averages: 1,143,339 vs 592,778 tokens; 115,396 vs 68,213 uncached; 19 vs 11.5 turns; 141 vs 71 seconds; $0.65 vs $0.37 at API list prices.

Claude edits my videos. Here's the whole setup.

Claude edits my videos. Here's how, free.

A small film crew. It lives in a folder.

7 steps. The last one is the one nobody mentions.

Get Claude Code ready.

Find the skills.

Install HyperFrames.

Make a video folder and drop your recording in.

Claude does the cutting. You do the talking.

Ask Claude to edit it.

Let the first one take its time.

Let Claude organise its folder. Every edit gets faster.

Paste this once your first edit is done.

Some of what's come out of the folder.

Video is one job. Claude can take on a lot more of your week.

1-to-1 coaching

Cohorts

Operating systems, built with you

Want to see what it looks like for your business.