final-cut-pro

A tool for editing Final Cut Pro video timelines through FCPXML, the file format Final Cut Pro uses to describe projects. It can inspect, diagnose, change, mark, generate, transcribe, and export edits.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to analyze projects, find gaps or duplicate clips, trim and reorder footage, remove silence, create rough cuts and montages, add chapters or subtitles, and export project files.
Why use it?
It helps you understand a timeline’s clips, layers, duration, and problems before making changes. It also lets you edit based on spoken words, silence, filler words, or imported markers.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/daredev256/fcp-mcp-server/skill
Any agent
npx skills add DareDev256/fcp-mcp-server --skill skill
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DareDev256/fcp-mcp-server

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 113 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,133 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00113 $0.01133
Opus 5 $0.00056 $0.00566
Sonnet 5 $0.00023 $0.00227
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00113

Measured 3d ago against content hash cfaf5e1063bd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

final-cut-pro scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skill/SKILL.md · 87 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 87 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Final Cut Pro editing via FCPXML

Before you touch anything

Always inspect then diagnose before you edit. Timelines carry structure that is not obvious from a filename, and an edit against a wrong assumption is expensive to undo.

  1. inspect with action analyze_timeline for shape, duration, resolution.
  2. diagnose with action validate_timeline for gaps, flash frames, duplicates.
  3. Read the preview://<path> resource to actually SEE the timeline before you change anything. It renders a self-contained HTML timeline, including connected clips on their own lane rows, so you can see B-roll and audio layers, not just the primary storyline.

The seven groups

Group Use it for
inspect Read-only understanding. Start here, always.
diagnose Find problems: gaps, flash frames, dead air, duplicates, beats.
edit Change clips: insert, delete, trim, split, reorder, retime, remove silence.
mark Markers and chapters, including SRT/VTT and beat import.
generate Build new structure: rough cuts, montages, A/B roll, templates.
transcript Transcribe locally, then edit or clean up by what was SAID.
deliver Export to other NLEs, reformat, relink, push into FCP.

Every call takes {"action": "...", "args": {...}}. If you pass an action the group does not own, the error lists the valid ones — read it rather than guessing.

FCPXML facts that will bite you

  • Time is rational, never float. 3600/2400s is 1.5 seconds. Never do float math on timecode and never round it yourself.
  • offset is the timeline position. start is the source in-point. They are different numbers and confusing them silently shifts an edit.
  • Library clips and timeline clips are different elements. <asset-clip> lives in the library, <clip> lives on the timeline.
  • Markers are children of clips, not siblings.
  • The <spine> is the primary storyline. Connected clips hang off spine clips by lane: positive is above (video), negative is below (audio).
  • .fcpxmld bundles are directories, wrapping Info.fcpxml plus sidecar data. Sidecars must be preserved on save or object-tracking and Cinematic data is destroyed.
  • Duplicate clip names are common. Prefer element-based operations over name lookups where a tool offers both.

Read the full file on GitHub · 87 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 87 lines · 113 tokens per session scan A cfaf5e1063bd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

final-cut-pro is a skill published in the GitHub repository DareDev256/fcp-mcp-server (95 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 113 tokens to every session and 1,133 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

chatcut-to-fcpxml

Clone a ChatCut project into Final Cut Pro via FCPXML with frame accuracy — cuts, multi-track overlays, zoom moves (static punch-ins and keyframed slow pushes), music/SFX with volumes and fades, and native iTT captions. Use this skill whenever a user wants to export, hand off, convert, or "open in Final Cut Pro / FCP"…

AFangTeam/chatcut-to-fcpxml · 139 tokens

systematic-debugging

Use when encountering any bug, test failure, or unexpected behavior, before proposing fixes.

obra/superpowers · 21 tokens

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

obra/superpowers · 37 tokens

auto-perf-optimize

Run agent-driven VS Code performance or memory investigations. Use when asked to launch Code OSS, automate a VS Code scenario, run the Chat memory smoke runner, capture renderer heap snapshots, take workflow screenshots, compare run summaries, or drive a repeatable scenario before heap-snapshot analysis.

microsoft/vscode · 62 tokens

chat-perf

Run chat perf benchmarks and memory leak checks against the local dev build or any published VS Code version. Use when investigating chat rendering regressions, validating perf-sensitive changes to chat UI, or checking for memory leaks in the chat response pipeline.

microsoft/vscode · 51 tokens

chat-pet-sprite-creation

Use when creating or changing VS Code chat pet sprite art, sprite sheets, state animations, eye treatments, Stable/Insiders variants, or pet transitions under src/vs/workbench/contrib/chat/browser/widget/media/chatPet.

microsoft/vscode · 53 tokens