Claude Cut is built for single-speaker footage: YouTube monologues, founder explainers, video essays, course modules, interview answers. It is not a multicam or dialogue-scene tool.
Quick Start
1
Open the tool
Open Claude Cut from the Tools Menu. Your sequence must be open, with at least one audio track carrying the voice.
2
Pick a model
Choose the AI model in the Model box (top left). Sonnet 5 is the default.
3
Click Analyze
The green Analyze button runs the whole pipeline on its own: silence detection → transcription → AI analysis. Leave the app alone while the progress modal is up.
4
Review the transcript
Segments the AI wants to remove are flagged CUT in red; the rest stay KEEP in green. Read them, flip whatever you disagree with.
5
Apply Cut
Click Apply Cut. The cut clips are removed and the gaps closed, in one click.
Step 1 — Analyze
Model
Transcription precision
The small chevron button to the left of Analyze opens the engine menu:PremiereGPT (standard)
Fast, reliable transcription. Included — no extra credits. The right choice in the vast majority of cases.
+ Advanced word precision
Re-syncs every word to the audio for sharper cut points. Slightly slower and costs extra credits (shown on the button).
What the pipeline actually does
The single Analyze button chains three steps, shown live in the progress modal:
Both the silences and the AI’s cuts are applied together, later, when you click Apply Cut — so the transcript you review always matches the timeline you’re looking at.
The whole run is billed as one combined charge, and only if it completes. A failed or aborted run doesn’t cost you.
What the AI removes — and what it never touches
Understanding this is what makes the review step fast.It removes exactly two things
Production pollution
Mic checks, “is it rolling?”, framing chatter, self-direction spoken out loud, asides to whoever is behind the camera, post-take reactions (“was that good?”). Almost always clustered at the very start and the very end of the take.
Repetitions & reformulations
Retakes of the same line, verbatim repeats, and reformulation chains where the speaker searches for the right phrasing. One version survives — usually the most complete one — and the others go.
It never does these
- Rewrite, rephrase or reorder anything. Your words stay in your order. The only lever is which segments survive.
- Tighten for style. A segment that is merely slow, long-winded or “could be punchier” is kept. That’s an editing decision, not a cleanup one.
- Cut a deliberate repetition. Rhetorical triples (“It’s not about speed. It’s not about price. It’s about trust.”) and emphasis (“very, very fast”) stay.
- Drop new information, even when it’s clumsily phrased.
- Break a seam. Connector segments (“and that’s why…”, “but the thing is…”) are kept when removing them would make the following line dangle.
The AI is deliberately conservative: keeping a slightly weak segment costs you almost nothing, while dropping a load-bearing one breaks the video. Expect it to leave in things you’d personally cut — that’s the intended bias, and the review pass is where you tighten further.
Step 2 — Review
This is not an optional step. Treat the AI output as a strong first pass, never as a final cut.Editing the transcript
The Timeline Metrics box tracks the damage live: Del. is how much you’re removing, New Dur. is what the sequence will last after applying.
Step 3 — Apply Cut
Apply Cut disables the cut segments and immediately removes the disabled clips, closing the gaps — one click, clean timeline.Steering the AI with a prompt
The Analyze button in the panel runs the default cleanup — there is no prompt box in the panel. To steer the AI, ask the Copilot in the chat instead:“Clean up my sequence — remove the bad takes and repetitions, but keep every personal anecdote even if it’s long.”The Copilot runs the same engine, plus your instruction.
What a steering prompt can do
- Protect a category of content: “Keep every emotional anecdote and personal story, even the rambling ones.”
- Protect a topic: “Never cut anything about pricing or the guarantee — I need those beats intact.”
- Set the aggressiveness: “Be aggressive on the intro and the outro, conservative in the middle.”
- Choose between duplicates: “When I say something twice, keep the first, more spontaneous version.” (The default keeps the most complete one.)
- Handle a known habit: “I restart my sentences a lot — drop the false starts.”
- Flag your workflow: “I always do three takes of each line back to back — keep the last one.”
What a steering prompt cannot do
- Rewrite or reorder. No rephrasing, no moving a paragraph earlier, no adding a transition word to fix a seam.
- Hit a target duration. “Cut it down to 5 minutes” will not work — the AI removes what’s removable, not a quota.
- Cut by timecode. “Cut everything after 12:30” is a timeline operation, not a cleanup one. Do it yourself, or ask the Copilot for a plain cut.
- Judge delivery. It reads the transcript, not the performance. It can’t know which take had better energy, only which is more complete.
- Cut for topic. “Remove the part about the competitor” is an editorial decision outside its two rules — do it in the review pass, it’s two clicks.
Recommended pattern
“[How aggressive]. Protect [content you refuse to lose]. [Any habit of yours worth knowing].”Example:
“Standard cleanup, slightly aggressive at the start. Protect anything where I give a number or a concrete example. I restart sentences often — keep the last attempt.”