How Agentic Video Editing Works: Four Designs and What Each One Costs You

Description and use

AI agent Claude Fable 5 produced an editable JSON cut plan, LUTs, and React components for a 3‑minute video, enabling full control over the editing workflow.

Problem

How to edit video using AI agents while retaining control over the edit files and ensuring transparency.

Outcome

The agent produced a fully editable JSON cut plan, LUTs, and React components, enabling transparent inspection and local rendering of a 3‑minute video in four days.

Workflow

• Understand footage by transcribing all takes with timestamps
• Plan cuts by selecting best takes and documenting reasons
• Apply cuts using ffmpeg guided by the JSON plan
• Check the cut by re‑transcribing and verifying filler words are removed
• Grade the footage by generating candidate looks and choosing one
• Add graphics by rebuilding static frames as React components
• Design review by exporting to Figma, importing designer changes, and updating the video
• Render the final 3:00 3840×2160 video with 4,334 frames and 653 MB size

Evidence

In June 2026, Thariq Shihipar of Anthropic's Claude Code team had Claude Fable 5 edit the launch video for Fable 5 itself: 17 takes of raw 4K footage, about 25 GB.

Source

The edit is text, which let Claude read, compare and regenerate it.

Source

It took four days (June 6 to 9), with about ten re‑renders in one night.

Source