Most AI video tools work like this: you upload a file, the AI does something to it, you download the result. The editor and the AI live in different places, and you are the courier between them.
Palmier Pro is built on a different premise: the AI agent and the timeline live in the same place, and both of you can make edits.
You open a project. Claude is looking at the same timeline you are. You ask it to trim the dead air, generate a B-roll shot, reorder the sections, regenerate that clip with a better prompt. It does. You see the result in the timeline immediately. No export, no upload, no round-trip.
It is a free, open source macOS video editor from Palmier (YC S24). We used it to edit a YouTube Short — and built an agent skill for it. Here is the full picture.
What Palmier Pro Actually Is
Palmier Pro is a Swift-native video editor built from scratch for macOS. The north-star comparison the team uses is Premiere Pro — a real non-linear editor with a real timeline — but with AI baked into the layer underneath the track, not bolted on as a sidebar panel.
Three things make it different from every other video editor:
1. AI generation is on the timeline.
When you generate a video clip or an image using Seedance, Kling, or Nano Banana Pro, the result lands directly on a track in your project. There is no separate generation interface you switch to and then import from. Generate → appears in timeline → trim, adjust, extend, regenerate with a new prompt. All in one project.
2. Your AI agent can operate the editor.
When Palmier Pro is running, it exposes a local MCP server at http://127.0.0.1:19789/mcp. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, and Cursor can connect to that server and issue commands: read your timeline, add clips, trim footage, generate new content with a prompt, reorder segments, and iterate on AI-generated footage. The agent has full project context — it knows what clips are on which tracks, how long they are, what their prompts were — and it edits accordingly.
3. It is open source.
The editor, the MCP server, and the in-app agent chat are all open source under GPLv3. The only closed part is the generative AI processing pipeline. If you just want a free video editor with agent connectivity and no generative features, you have it. If you want the AI generation, that is where the subscription comes in.
What It Looks Like in Practice
We used Palmier Pro to edit a YouTube Short — watch it here.
The workflow: import your clips, connect Claude via MCP, describe what you want. Claude reads the full timeline, makes the edits, and you see them happen. The agent can trim silence, generate a missing shot from a text prompt, reorder sections to improve pacing, or regenerate a clip with a different creative direction — all without you switching tools or copying files.