If you run the company, every hour on a video timeline is an hour you're not selling. 🐬

It's the same trap as being the only closer: if it needs you, it doesn't scale.

Our last episode went into Claude Code at 41 minutes and came out at 31. Pauses gone, "ums" gone, false starts gone, captions and chapters done. About 20 minutes of machine time. A few minutes of mine, to review it.

No editor. No Premiere. One line in the terminal.

And it's not another app with another subscription and another timeline to learn. It's your rules, saved once as a Claude Code skill, reused on every video. (If you love editing, keep doing it. This is for everyone else.)

Here's the setup, in 5 steps. (Every prompt, word for word, is in the free kit.)

Step 1: One prompt installs everything

Open your terminal (on a Mac: Command and Space, type Terminal, press Enter), type claude, and paste:

Install everything I need to edit videos on this Mac: ffmpeg, uv and WhisperX. Test each one and tell me what works.

You don't need to know what those three tools are. Claude Code installs them, tests them and tells you when it's ready.

Step 2: Every word gets a timestamp

Good edits cut between two words, never in the middle of a breath. So the first job is a transcript where every single word has a start and end time, with every pause and every "um" marked.

WhisperX does that. Claude Code runs it for you and hands you a transcript you can actually read.

Step 3: You make the taste call

This is the step everyone skips, and it's why so many AI edits feel stale. 🐯

Claude Code reads the whole transcript and writes an edit plan: which pauses, fillers and retakes to cut, which 10 seconds become the cold open, and the chapters. Then it stops and shows you the plan. You read it for two minutes.

True story from this week. My first plan had 10 chapters. One was called "We sent terrible AI emails too."

Who clicks that? Nobody. It left a bad taste.

I cut it, and now it's a rule in our system: max 5 chapters, and each one says what the viewer gets by jumping there.

AI drafts. You stay in control.

Step 4: Render, then let it check its own work

Claude Code renders the plan with ffmpeg: frame-accurate cuts, soft audio fades so nothing pops, loudness set to the level YouTube expects, captions and chapters on the new timeline.

Then it checks itself: length, audio in sync, loudness, black frames, and it looks at a dozen stills from the finished video. If something fails, it fixes and renders again. 🌴

Step 5: Make it one command

The last prompt turns everything above into a Claude Code skill. From then on, editing a video is:

/video-edit ~/Movies/episode-13/raw.mov

It stops once for your OK on the plan, then finishes.

Get every prompt (free)

The Claude Code Video Editing Kit has:

• the 5 copy-paste prompts, word for word
• our skill file, ready to drop into Claude Code
• "what good looks like" after every step, so you know it worked
• 4 one-prompt upgrades we added later (zooms, cutting to whoever is talking, title cards, captions for Shorts)

👉 Get the kit: www.strategysprints.com/claude-video

Copy, paste, and your next video edits itself while you get back to the work only you can do. That's what a Sprintlife looks like. 🐬

Want more tools like this every week? Join the Sprint Club, 7 days free: www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆