kimo

kimo is an open-source (MIT) video editor with no editing GUI, written in Rust and built by Naman. AI agents connect to it over the Model Context Protocol, and cutting, keyframing, grading, tracking, captioning, audio mixing and export are all tool calls. The latest release listed is v3.0.0, with installers for Windows and Linux and a build-from-source path for macOS.

What It Is

kimo ships as kimo-mcp, an MCP stdio server of roughly 15 MB with a CPU-only renderer that the docs say is tuned for a 2 GB machine. It needs ffmpeg and ffprobe on the PATH for decoding, encoding and probing media. The project's FAQ describes it as an early engine and points to FEATURES.md in the repository for which capabilities are solid, beta or not yet built.

How the Workflow Runs

You register the kimo-mcp binary with an MCP client (docs cover Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor and OpenCode, plus any generic stdio client), then describe edits in plain language. The agent translates them into calls such as trim, grade, caption and export. kimo renders on the CPU through FFmpeg and saves an editable project file alongside the output video, so edits can be reopened and re-rendered.

By default the server lists tools in 17 groups to keep agent context small, and agents find specific tools with search_tools and kimo_describe. The KIMO_TOOLS variable switches to core or flat profiles that list more tools up front. The README describes 376 registered tools across areas including editing, motion, compositing, text, 3D VFX, tracking, color science, audio and output.

Spectator App and CLI

The repository also includes a read-only Tauri spectator app that shows the agent's tool calls, timeline and preview frames live over loopback telemetry. A kimo command-line client can call the same tools directly against a project file. Per the FAQ, kimo runs locally as a stdio server and talks only to the agent that launched it.

Platform Notes

Linux x86_64 is the documented tested platform. The Windows installer is not code-signed and is marked unverified, so SmartScreen shows a warning. There is no prebuilt macOS binary.