Say it, then watch it get made
The agent trims pauses and retakes, writes captions, adds titles and motion, and lays the sound underneath. You type a request like this one.
cut the pauses and retakes, add captions
Type what you want. Watch the edit happen.
ZKidz Studio is an open-source video editor that runs on your own computer. Drop in your footage and say what you want in plain words. An AI agent cuts it, captions it and renders it while you watch.
What it does
One sentence in, a finished short out. Every step happens on your machine and shows up in the preview and timeline as it lands.
Eleven checks before anything ships
These run on the export. A master that fails one does not get copied out.
A master, a Reels cut and covers
Each deliverable is hashed while it is copied, and the SHA-256 is listed on the Render screen. 4K renders on NVIDIA today; other backends render 1080.
Every version is saved
Ask for a change and the preview updates right away. Go back to any earlier version when you want to.
Your footage stays on your computer
The only outside traffic is the calls to Claude and the downloads setup makes. Bring an API key, your cloud, or your own Claude Code login.
Runs on the hardware you have
zks doctor tests each backend by encoding real frames, then uses the first one that works. Every feature has a CPU path.
How it works
From a sentence to a checked export, in five steps.
-
You
Drop in footage and type what you want, in plain words.
-
Claude
Watches the recording and plans the edit: cuts, captions, titles and sound.
-
Studio tools
The plan runs through the app's own tools, so each change lands in the timeline while you watch.
-
Engine
Renders on your machine with the first video backend that works, down to plain CPU.
-
Preview, checks, export
Eleven checks run on the export. Then you get the master, the Reels cut and the covers.
Showcase
ZKidz Studio grew out of a pipeline that has shipped 40+ edits. These are the covers from that channel.
Edited in ZKidz Studio
Episode 12, "Who pays my AI subscriptions?", was edited in the studio. Its master passed 11 of 11 quality checks.
Connect Claude
Pick one of three ways to reach Claude. You can switch later.
Your own API key
Recommended- You bring
- A Claude Console API key
- Who pays
- Your Console account
The key is stored in your OS keychain, and only its last four characters are ever shown.
Your own cloud
Advanced- You bring
- Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry or Claude on AWS
- Who pays
- Your cloud account
It uses your cloud CLI's own sign-in. The app stores no cloud secret.
Your Claude Code login
Opt-in- You bring
- Claude Code installed on this computer, signed in
- Who pays
- Your Claude plan's limits
Off until you turn it on. It runs the unmodified claude program in a terminal pane.
The app never offers "Sign in with Claude" and never accepts a pasted token or credential file. Read the details.
Install
One command per OS. It installs the pinned tools, runs setup, then starts the app.
git clone https://github.com/theangeloumali/zkidz-studio && cd zkidz-studio && ./setup.shgit clone https://github.com/theangeloumali/zkidz-studio; cd zkidz-studio
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup.ps1Then run pnpm start and open http://127.0.0.1:4317. The server listens on loopback only.
You need Linux x64 or arm64, macOS on Apple silicon, or Windows 10/11, plus 20 GB of free disk, git and curl. Setup downloads the rest and checks
each download's SHA-256. On WSL, keep the repo and your media in the Linux home, not under /mnt.
Docs
The user guides live in the repository.