open-edit

@veedstudio/openedit-cli

The Open Edit command-line tool: agent-driven video creation and editing, powered by VEED.

The package carries the content it runs on — the recipe pool, the director's brief, the design substrate and the gates — so a fresh install can draw a style, build a document and gate it without cloning anything. The source is public at veedstudio/open-edit, whose README covers what Open Edit is and what it makes; this page is the command surface.

Usage

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli --help

Commands

login

Log in with VEED (OAuth 2.1 + PKCE via the browser; the token is stored locally and refreshed automatically):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli login

Pass --manual (or set VEED_LOGIN_MANUAL=1) when no reachable browser exists: the URL is printed, and the redirect is pasted back instead of caught on a localhost loopback.

token

Print a valid VEED access token for other tools to consume, refreshing it first when stale (VEED_ACCESS_TOKEN, when set, is passed through as-is). The value is printed only when the output is captured; run it straight in a terminal and it reports that a token exists without putting one in your scrollback:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli token

Exits non-zero when no login is stored. --path prints the token store location instead of a token.

transcribe

Transcribe videos, writing runs/<key>/transcript.json. There is no default provider — the choice is the user's, recorded once with --record. Locally with WhisperX (free, offline, nothing billed anywhere):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli transcribe video.mp4 [...] [--model medium] [--language de] [--force]

A transcript already on disk is left alone (it may have been retimed onto an edit); --force transcribes it again.

Or hosted by VEED (premium quality; requires the one-time login, and spends the workspace's VEED transcription credits — --workspace <id> names which, required only when the account has several):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli transcribe --provider veed video.mp4 [...]

--record <veed|whisperx|custom> [--model <id>] records the transcription provider choice in .open-edit-prefs.json instead of running anything.

whisper

Map a Whisper-family JSON produced by your own service (WhisperX, openai-whisper, whisper-timestamped, mlx-whisper, whisper.cpp -oj -ml 1, or the OpenAI API's verbose_json with word granularity) into the same runs/<key>/transcript.json:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli whisper transcription.json media.mp4 [...] [--force]

Word timestamps are required; the media argument may be a video or an audio file.

prep

Probe the source canvas, synthesize word-timings.json from the transcript's real per-word times, and cut one base frame per beat (the transcript must already exist):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli prep video.mp4 [...]

synth-timings

Even-split word reveal delays for a single beat window:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli synth-timings --start 1.2 --end 3.4 --words "A B C" [--out file.json]

generate / generate-set / sample-presenter

Fabric generation — source footage from a script, when there is no video to caption. Generating spends TWO of the named workspace's allowances — AI Playground credits for the video and text-to-speech seconds for the voice — so it is two commands: the first quotes both and records the approval, the second spends exactly what was approved (no --script on the spend pass — the recorded, hashed script is what bills):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli generate --script "spoken words" --key my-run --workspace <id>
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli generate --key my-run --yes

--resume collects a job already created and paid for; --abandon <sessionId> clears one abandoned charge record. generate-set --shots shots.json covers several shots under one approval, and sample-presenter proposes a deterministic character/voice pair for a run key (listing costs nothing).

background-removal / lipsync

Remove a video's background (VEED's free route by default; --fast uses a fal model billed to your own fal key), or re-lipsync a video to a new audio track (always fal-billed). Both use the VEED login only to host the local file:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli background-removal video.mp4 [--fast] [--mask-only] [--out <path>]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli lipsync video.mp4 narration.mp3 [--out <path>]

The fal key comes from FAL_KEY, or OPEN_EDIT_FAL_KEY_FILE pointing at a file that holds it.

install-engine

Download the veed render engine (checksum-verified, from its public GitHub releases) into the app-data dir, or upgrade an existing install:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli install-engine [weave-v<semver>]

VEED_ENGINE_BIN overrides where the engine is looked for. The binary is licensed separately (PolyForm Shield); its license installs beside it.

install-ffmpeg / install-whisperx

The other two installers. install-ffmpeg checks for a working FFmpeg first (VEED_ENGINE_FFMPEG, then PATH, then a previous install) and only downloads when nothing works — a checksum-verified static build into the app-data dir (the download route is Windows-only; macOS points at brew install ffmpeg). install-whisperx installs the local transcription provider into an isolated uv/pipx tool environment; it never touches the system Python.

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli install-ffmpeg [--check|--force]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli install-whisperx [<version>]

mux-audio / mix-audio

Put sound on a render. mux-audio lays a run's source audio (or --audio <file>) onto its silent render, levelled to -14 LUFS / -1 dBTP (--no-loudnorm keeps the source level; the line it prints says which correction ran); mix-audio first builds one track from many pieces — narration, music, effects — per the run's mix spec, with music ducked under the voice:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli mix-audio runs/<key>            # → runs/<key>/audio/mix.m4a
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli mux-audio runs/<key> --audio runs/<key>/audio/mix.m4a

wcag-pass

Contrast-audit a rendered run through the engine's bundled analyzer, and (with --apply) promote the remediated template after re-verifying it:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli wcag-pass --run runs/<key> [--apply]

Needs the installed engine (install-engine). WCAG_REMEDIATE can point at a replacement remediation applier; by default the bundled one runs as its own plain-node process.

gates / expect-windows

The whole gate chain — design → lint → verify → wcag → record → probe → mux — as one command over a run directory (run it outside any sandbox; rendering needs a real desktop session):

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli gates runs/<key> [--doc <subdir>] [--audio <file>] [--no-loudnorm]

expect-windows derives the verify.expect timing assertions from a document's own gates (--write stamps them into the manifest); the chain runs it automatically. The design and lint gates come from the content this package carries, so they run with no checkout; OPEN_EDIT_ROOT pointed at one replaces them with that checkout's.

Editing and QA tools

The remaining pipeline tools, each a direct port of its script:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli concat-chapters <run-dir> --doc chapters/act-1 --doc chapters/act-2
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli concat-videos [--canvas WxH] [--fit letterbox|crop|open] <out> <in1> <in2> [...]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli cut-frames <video> [--json]      # frames at every shot boundary
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli scene-frames <video> <outDir>    # stills for a clip with no beats
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli scoped-edit <baseline.wv> <candidate.wv> [--allow <selector>]...
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli brand --file <brand.json> [--brief] [--check]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli creative-log --for <video> [--reject "…" --why "…"] [--brief]

The cut tools, for an edit made before captioning: measure where speech starts, stops and pauses; assemble the kept ranges of an EDL (edit decision list) in one encode with crossfaded joins, each range snapped to the frame grid; and move the per-word timings you already have onto that timeline instead of transcribing the cut again. --gap and --crossfade are milliseconds; the EDL is seconds.

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli speech-probe <video> [--range a:b] [--gap 250] [--window 10] [--json]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli apply-edl --edl edl.json --out cut.mp4 [--crossfade 40] [--crf 20]
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli retime-transcript --edl edl.json --out <OPEN_EDIT_ROOT>/runs/cut/transcript.json

The retimed transcript goes where prep reads, runs/<key>/ under the runtime root, so prep cut.mp4 finds it and the cut is never transcribed.

stills / preview

stills fetches licensed pictures from Wikimedia Commons, recording each file's terms beside it (search / show / save). preview serves a read-only localhost page for a run — scrub the footage, follow the transcript, and the player swaps to the new render when it lands:

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli stills search "berlin skyline" --limit 10
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli preview runs/<key>

init / readiness

init is the workspace setup: it checks the machine dependencies (git, Node, pnpm, ffmpeg), clones the Open Edit runtime when the workspace isn't already a checkout, installs its pinned dependencies, and verifies the render engine. Bare init applies only safe, workspace-local setup; --dry reports without writing; --auto-approve also applies machine-global installs and clean updates, and is only for after a person has approved every reported action. Exit 10 means something is awaiting that approval; on success the workspace root is printed on stdout.

npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli init --dry --workspace <dir>
npx @veedstudio/openedit-cli init --workspace <dir>

readiness reports what is present vs missing for a run — read-only, no network — and exits 1 when a blocking item is missing.

Configuration

Environment variable	Effect
VEED_ORIGIN	Overrides the default https://www.veed.io origin.
OPENEDIT_STATE_DIR	Overrides where login state is stored.
OPEN_EDIT_ROOT	Where runs/<key>/ outputs and .open-edit-prefs.json are written (default: the app-data directory below). Pointed at an Open Edit checkout it also replaces the bundled content, so the CLI runs that checkout's recipes and gates instead.
VEED_ENGINE_FFMPEG / VEED_ENGINE_FFPROBE	ffmpeg/ffprobe binaries (default: PATH; ffprobe defaults beside a configured ffmpeg).
WHISPERX_BIN / WHISPERX_MODEL	WhisperX binary and fallback model tier (defaults: whisperx on PATH, small.en).
OPEN_EDIT_WHISPERX_DEVICE / OPEN_EDIT_WHISPERX_COMPUTE	WhisperX device/compute (defaults: cpu/int8).

Login state lives in the platform's per-user app-data directory: ~/Library/Application Support/veed-openedit on macOS, %APPDATA%\veed-openedit on Windows, and $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/veed-openedit (default ~/.config/veed-openedit) on Linux.

License

Apache-2.0. See the bundled LICENSE and NOTICE files.