How it works
Direct the edit. Claude does the work.
01 — Workflow
How it works
- 01
Find Your Style
Explore animated demonstrations across ten editing categories.
- 02
Build Your Mix
Add techniques, arrange them, and customise the settings.
- 03
Copy Your Prompt
Generate structured instructions for your editing workflow.
- 04
Create with Claude
Give Claude Code your footage and run the editing instructions.
CES builds the instructions — it does not render video in your browser. You'll need Claude Code plus a video toolchain (Remotion and/or FFmpeg) on your machine to produce the final edit.
What CES does — and doesn't do
CES does not render or upload video. The animated previews are illustrative demonstrations of each technique, built in your browser. Your real edit is produced later, on your own machine, when Claude Code follows the compiled prompt with your footage.
Beginner's guide
- Install Claude Code and open it in an empty project folder (or an existing Remotion project). Follow Anthropic's official Claude Code documentation for installation.
- Make sure the video tools are available: Node.js 20+ and FFmpeg/ffprobe on your PATH. For motion graphics, captions and layouts the prompt recommends Remotion (React-based video). If Remotion's official Claude Code skills/plugin are available to you, install them — the prompt tells Claude to use them when present and not to pretend otherwise.
- Put your assets in the folder: the source video, a transcript (SRT/VTT, ideally word-level — Claude can also generate one locally), screenshots, music you have a licence for, logos.
- Build your recipe in CES: add styles, drag them into order, open the composer to set timing, lanes and parameters. Fill in the Project tab with the file paths so Claude doesn't have to ask.
- Copy the Detailed Production Prompt and paste it into Claude Code. It includes the role, project configuration, ordered beats, global treatments, implementation guidance, integrity rules, deliverables and a QA checklist.
- Review the output. Claude Code reports what it implemented, what it substituted, and renders an MP4 you can check — it's instructed never to claim completion without an actual output file.
Sequence vs. layers vs. global treatments
The composer keeps five lanes separate, because real edits aren't one flat list:
- Primary sequence — beats that take over the picture in order (hooks, layouts, B-roll, signature effects).
- Visual overlays — things on top of the picture at a moment (proof cards, zooms, callouts).
- Captions — a text layer that usually runs across all dialogue.
- Audio — sound accents and mix treatments.
- Global treatments — colour grades and textures that apply to the whole video and never consume timeline time.
When you don't set times, CES derives an editable timing plan from your target duration: beats are spread across the video in your order, overlays anchor to the beat before them and transitions sit on the cut after it. Times derived this way are marked ≈ in the prompt.
Compatibility checks
CES flags combinations that fight each other — two full-frame layouts at once, two caption styles on the same dialogue, stacked camera moves, two base grades — and missing prerequisites like screenshots, music for beat sync, or a subject mask. It never removes your choices; it explains and offers fixes.