OpenVids

OpenVids is an open-source, agent-first video editor for macOS and Windows. Its premise is simple: you direct, and agents edit. Instead of building an edit by hand, you describe the film you want, and AI agents build the chapters, cut the timeline, add motion and sound, and review the render. OpenVids is built for people who want to start from a description of the story rather than from an empty timeline, while keeping the result editable. Every change an agent makes lands on a timeline you can take over yourself at any point. The problem OpenVids was built around is that the timeline grows faster than the story. Every project starts with a story, but as footage accumulates the edit becomes a list of clips to manage rather than a story to tell. The creators of OpenVids describe losing the thread somewhere around clip two hundred. They wanted the story to stay visible the whole way through, so that the narrative — not the clip count — remains the organising principle of the project. That framing shapes the whole product: the editor is designed around chapters and a story structure rather than an undifferentiated sequence of clips. At the centre of OpenVids are its agents. You describe the film, and the agents work on your behalf: building the chapters, cutting the timeline, adding motion and sound, and reviewing the render. This is why OpenVids describes itself as an agent-first editor rather than an AI-assisted one — the agents are the primary way edits get made, and you direct them in plain language. The Product Hunt listing summarises the same idea as an open-source video editor you run by chatting with AI agents. The workflow is a conversation about the film rather than a series of manual trimming operations. OpenVids organises a project through named workspaces — Agents, Media, Story Graph, Edit, Motion, Sound, Render and Licenses — which the site presents as one continuous workflow rather than separate tools. The Story Graph is where the story structure lives: on the site's own demo project the chapters are listed as Cold open, The problem, Meet OpenVids, Feature tour, In the field and Outro, each with a timecode. The Media workspace tracks the assets in the project — the example shown lists 23 assets with 1 missing — so you can see what the edit depends on and what still needs to be supplied. The Edit, Motion and Sound workspaces cover the craft layers of the edit. The example project shows media assets such as an A-roll clip, B-roll footage and a motion asset, indicating that the editor works with different kinds of material — camera footage, supporting shots and motion pieces — inside the same project. Motion assets carry their own durations, and sound is handled as its own workspace, so an agent can add motion and sound to the cut as it builds. The Render workspace is where the finished edit is produced, and the agents also review the render, closing the loop between the description you gave and the video that comes out. The unique approach is the combination of agent-driven editing with a fully inspectable timeline. Agents do the work — cutting, adding motion and sound, and reviewing the render — but nothing is hidden: every change lands on a timeline you can take over. That means you can start with a description, let the agents assemble a first cut around a story structure of chapters, and then step in and edit directly when you want to. OpenVids is also free and open source, with the code available on GitHub and downloadable builds published as releases, so the editing engine is something you can inspect and run yourself. The payoff for users is that the story stays visible from the first line of your description to the final render. Rather than losing the thread in a growing pile of clips, you keep a chaptered structure that reflects what you are trying to say. Because agents handle the repetitive work of cutting the timeline and adding motion and sound, the first version of an edit arrives without a long manual pass. And because the result is a real timeline rather than a black box, you keep control: you can take over at any point instead of accepting whatever the agents produced. Concrete scenarios follow the demo project on the site. A creator describes a short film and the agents turn it into a chaptered edit with a cold open, a problem section, a product introduction, a feature tour, an in-the-field section and an outro. Editors working with mixed material can bring in A-roll and B-roll footage alongside motion assets such as a title reveal, and let the agents place motion and sound around them. Projects that depend on many assets benefit from the Media workspace view, which surfaces the full asset list and flags anything missing before render. Finally, anyone who wants to check the result can review the render with the agents, then open the timeline and make their own changes. OpenVids runs on macOS and Windows. The site offers a download for macOS on Apple Silicon and a download for Windows, both at version 0.5.4, and points to the source on GitHub. It is free and open source, and the site's own demo work references open movies from the Blender Foundation under CC BY, along with a Licenses workspace — so projects can track the provenance of the material they use. The Product Hunt entry categorises it under Design Tools, GitHub, YouTube and Video. It suits directors, editors and creators who work on macOS or Windows and want to direct an edit with agents while retaining a timeline they can take over. OpenVids' value proposition is straightforward: you direct, agents edit. By describing the film you want and letting agents build chapters, cut the timeline, add motion and sound, and review the render — all onto a timeline you can take over — OpenVids keeps the story, not the clip count, at the centre of the edit. It is free, open source, and available for macOS and Windows.