Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI

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Show HN: Palmier Pro – Open-source macOS video editor built for AI

185

by harrisontin

Hi HN, we are Marcos and Harrison, cofounders of Palmier (https://palmier.io). We are building Palmier Pro, an open source macOS video editor, with built-in AI generation and a local MCP server that connects to your agent. Here are a few demos:

- Making some AI transitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbM_-eR1GX4

- Multicam editing with Codex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjS2q2LT1q8

- Cutting long form clips into shorts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR66eN2ouuQ

We built Palmier Pro as an internal tool when we were making AI launch videos for other startups. The main problem it solved in the beginning was the back-and-forth between AI generation platform and video editor. The iteration loop was awkward: AI videos → download → import to editor → edit → realize we need to change the AI video → repeat. So we built a minimal video editor where we could let Claude generate AI videos inside the editor.

As we gave more and more tools to the agent, we wanted to push to see what else agents can do in the video editing space. So today, your Claude/Codex can:

- Manage projects inside Palmier Pro

- Import media from a public URL or filesystem to the project, and organize them in folders

- Search media (by embedding footages using SigLIP2 running locally)

- Edit the timeline (tracks/clips/keyframes operations)

- Generate images, videos, sound effects, captions, music

- Export videos

There are two ways for LLMs to interact with the editor: by connecting to the local MCP server, or using the in-app chat. Both use the same tools and APIs exposed by the video editor.

We have seen people using MCP server to connect to their own workflow to automate massive-scale video editing (e.g. given this same podcast style, replicate it with other footages that I have). We have also seen people using the in-app chat where it lives closer to the editor UI, with lower latency for faster iteration.

We don't believe that AI is going to replace human creativity (nor should it), but where it can really help is in automating the gruntwork in video editing. Most work in the editing workflow is more mechanical than creative. Our vision is to build a video editor where AI can enable more individuals to create.

Throughout our experiments, AI is not very good at creative editing, but given a pattern (transcription-based, beat-based), it can do a decent job at rough cut.

We built Palmier Pro in Swift as an MVP because we wanted better performance and minimal dependencies (no nodejs/webview), with some native macOS APIs like SpeechAnalyzer and CoreML for us to run some models locally. We use SpeechAnalyzer for local transcriber, SigLip2 to embed video frames, beat_this for beat detection, Silero VAD for silence detection, all running locally. The tradeoff is that we don't support Linux or Windows at the moment.

Palmier Pro is open source and free to try out (macOS 26 only at the moment, though - we'll support more platforms over time, but for now are focusing on iterating the core product).

No login required except for the AI generation features, which route requests to our backend. We are offering free credits on sign up so you can try out the AI generation as well.

We'd love to hear your feedback!

Marciplan
61d
This looks great! Have you thought about dropping the 'subscription'-part and 'just' selling credits instead?
Here's my thinking as a SaaS founder: when I launch a product, I don't need a video every month. So a monthly pricing makes me do this little calculation every time: "do I need a video this month? nah. Then I'll wait. I lose the early-bird price, but I still net out cheaper." And since there's no yearly option, there's nothing pulling me into the early plan either.
What I would jump on is a launch offer. Something like XXX credits for a good price, enough that it feels like 3 videos over the course of a year. Even if I never use them all (very likely, honestly), I'd buy it. Credits sit there and wait for me, a subscription just quietly bills me for months I don't need it.
Hope that makes sense :)
1. harrisontin • OP
  31d
  It makes sense! We are still early in experimenting the pricing and would want to reduce user's overhead in thinking about pricing/credits as much as possible.
  1. lmf4lol
    01d
    then please offer flexibility. I am looking for sth like that , but i want a prepaid based solution and not another sub.
  2. Marciplan
    11d
    I get that too! Rooting for y'all, it looks amazing and I'll definitely grab a month once I have enough ideas enough :)
2. dthedavid
  11d
  I feel the same way too. I also open sourced a video editor. It's free to use and you can buy credits whenever you want to access AI specific features.
  1. juliangoetze
    01d
    What's the name of it?
nsbk
11d
This is what I have been waiting for in order to process my massive action camera library, I will definitely give it a try!
I will start with older standard GoPro videos, and hope that by the time I make it to the Insta360 videos the editor supports 360 video (unless it does already!)
1. harrisontin • OP
  01d
  not yet with .360 files. we currently support .mov and .mp4 for videos!
misterchocolat
21d
I've been following Marcos's youtube channel and it's so great to see that they've finally found their thing. Looks like an awesome product that people actually want. Well done.
1. hboon
  01d
  From a struggling bootstrapper, could you please elaborate:
  > it's so great to see that they've finally found their thing
k_dev
01d
Great project! have you considered giving the agents code-based video rendering like MoviePy or Remotion? Since LLMs are mostly trained on texts and code maybe for edits use code based approach and for complex scenes fallback for seedance, elevenlabs mcp or connectors
gabriel666smith
322h
Nice! Because the Grok subscription is the cheapest-per-second video offering (that I'm aware of) but doesn't provide API access, I'm often moving between the browser and editor (typically Final Cut).
It feels cheaper by orders of magnitude right now per-second. I'm not sure how long that will continue, but until then, that's pretty important to me, especially when video generation is so imprecise, and thus more of a "rough draft" creative tool than a "final shot" tool.
Quite often my workflow looks like: "Grab this frame from which I'd like a continuation" -> "Upload back to Grok on web" -> "Generate until happy" -> "Download and use".
So a feature request (or I'll just fork next time I'm doing something with AI video) is simply a browser tab alongside the generation tab, literally just to make that window swapping easier, and ideally with 'download' pointing to a sensible location to avoid file replication.
This feels closest to how I use AI video, which is just kind of like an infinitely extensible library tab on my video editing software. I know you said 'no webview' - I don't know Swift well enough to know if that excludes this feature.
There's probably a bunch of ways to improve my specific flow once there's a browser within the UI, especially with MCP integration. Much to consider.
And overall it looks fun, and I'm excited to give it a try. It's great this has beat detection specifically, because that's non-negotiable in a video editor for me when doing AI stuff, as the medium remains more suited to non-dialogue work.
Similarly, the CapCut 'AI video editor' that's most similar to the 'MCP' feature is unusably chaotic, so I'm interested to see how well models do in your architecture. I can understand why you've found structures like 'beat' or 'transcription' massively aid it.
Final Cut export - if it isn't supported by what you've already done (I don't move stuff between editors much!) - is really useful to me personally also.
Best of luck! Excited to test it! Thanks for sharing.
filipeisho
113h
Palmier team ftw. Great execution. I love editing videos like this
I remember playing with claude to try and generate videos (or tools to generate videos) a year ago. I never reached something like this, and I think the models were already capable back then.
1. Marcosricopeng
  09h
  Let's go! We're at a point where models are smart enough and generation models are good enough where a product like things finally makes sense. Exciting times!
dthedavid
11d
Nice project. I’m building a similar project. It’s open source too.
https://github.com/DonkeyUseCorp/Donkey
It’s mostly a web app with a native swift companion app to access local resources like TTS, file storage and video rendering.
I arrived at the same conclusion as you; every app should have AI chat. Just give it full access to the app like a real user. I found that users prefer talking to the AI when editing vs clicking around.
1. koladev32
  011h
mrkstu
11d
I assume using Swift means cross-platform support is tertiary at best?
I have mostly Macs in my workflow so not an issue for me, but its good to have that plainly stated if so.
Being able to edit a long video to pull out different speakers segments automatically or do automatic edits of speaker transitions would be great- I'll give it a try and see what scenarios are best suited for our use cases...
1. harrisontin • OP
  01d
  Yes currently its only macOS support.
  Long videos with different speakers is a core use case that we are trying to optimize for, please let us know how it goes for you!
didriksg
11d
Seems super convenient! I spent yesterday trying to edit a simple video for a project by hand and it was not a fun experience! Will check it out!
1. harrisontin • OP
  01d
  please try it out! Would love to learn more where agent helps you and fails you
draw_down
11d
I don't work with video but this seems very nice, and your promo video is wonderful. Great work!
1. Marcosricopeng
  01d
  Thank you! We're trying to make video editing accessible to everyone
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01d
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adenta
31d
Love to see it. We have been experimenting with https://github.com/ronak-create/FableCut, how is this similar? How is it different?
1. harrisontin • OP
  11d
  I have not heard of FableCut, but looks like an interesting project!
  It's similar in a sense that we're both exposing a mcp server to let claude runs editing tools, and also a traditional video editor interface.
  It's different in terms of how you run it. FableCut requires you to install node, ffmpeg, and run a local server and connect to it via Chromium-based browser, whereas Palmier Pro is a native Mac App.
  I don't know enough about the feature parity to comment on it. How is your experience with FableCut?
vouaobrasil
023h
> Most work in the editing workflow is more mechanical than creative.
I really disagree with this. Maybe once you start producing videos with a formula, it's true. But if you stop to think about it, a lot of things that people consider gruntwork hide little decision in them that subtly influence the creative process.
A lot of tech-minded people don't understand this about art but after editing tens of thousands of photos and over 300 videos, I can't say that there is much mechanical in the process. By automating parts of the process with AI you do hide some of the subtle decisions that might even be subconscious and therefore it still destroys creativity.
I'm sad when someones makes a product like this. Because what happens is that creativity is claimed as something important when really in the long run it is just suppressed for the sake of more efficiency.
I don't expect many people to care to understand this because there's $$$ in front of them and technologically-minded people get a dopamine hit from tech but that's the way it is and you can't hide from that truth. Sooner or later such things as this will be seen as an immense folly.
thenthenthen
021h
I really detest video. Its time based, needs rendering, takes up a lot of space… oh yeah has sound. Making a one minute recap of some footage takes me like 5 hours and I am still not satisfied. Will try this out!
cpursley
01d
Love seeing real native apps (vs electron hogs), starred. For heavy lifting and easier cross platform, Rust-based Crux is pretty cool, I'm experimenting with it now: https://github.com/redbadger/crux
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01d
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023h
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