2026
April
2nd April 2026
Happy Thursday! 👋
I think today is a BIG day for Final Cut Pro users. Maybe even the biggest day in the last decade.
Two weeks ago, elliotttate made a little post on Reddit about building a MCP server for CommandPost:
Final Cut Pro X CommandPost MCP - Almost instantly do things like cut to scene changes, remove silence in videos, etc.
MCP can be really powerful for automatically making any automation with CommandPost. I made a PR here if anyone wants to test it: https://github.com/CommandPost/CommandPost/pull/3514
Essentially, anything you'd ever want to automate, you can just type in a prompt and the MCP through CommandPost will figure out a way to do it. Automate cut to scene changes, remove silence in videos, export info from your timeline to a CSV, make changes based on edits you make to text, etc. the sky is pretty much the limit.
He also made a pull request to the CommandPost GitHub giving his work to the world for free, completely open source.
This was amazing and impressive in itself.
Sadly, in the last two weeks, I still haven't had a chance to properly review and work out how best to release this in CommandPost.
But whilst I was busy with life and work, elliotttate was even busier.
A day ago he posted:
True Native Text Based Editing Plugin (+ more powerful MCP)
It's wild that Apple hasn't add this yet when it took Claude about 20 seconds to write this.
I built out a modding platform for Final Cut Pro X that lets plugins safely access the true power of FCPX to do anything (including LLMs like Claude through its MCP) https://github.com/elliotttate/FCPBridge
This is an example of a plugin Claude created in about 20 seconds that gives full native text based editing to FCPX. The features that you can add to FCPX are limitless and it's been really fun to finally do a lot of things I've wanted to for a long time with FCPX. Really unlocks all kinds of amazing workflows.
TL;DR - This differs from the Command Post MCP that I showed recently in that the LLM has direct access to FCPX. This lets it directly control things programmatically rather than using limited accessibility features. Need to add a thousand markers, each at scene changes? Boom, it can do all 1,000 instantly. It's not limited by any UI limitations thus making this extremely powerful and fast.
Then a mere 12 hours ago he posted:
More Modded FCP Examples - Apple Intelligence, Command Palette, Speaker Detection, Remove Silences, Scene Change Cuts & More
A few more examples of what an LLM can do with modded FCP through FCPBridge
You can instantly do anything in FCP with Apple Intelligence like cut out silences, detect scene changes, cut to specific parts, add transitions, effects, titles, text based editing, text based color grading, etc.
The Command Palette is something I added last night and is really powerful and can instantly do thousands of things. And if anything is missing, you can just ask Claude, etc. and it will almost instantly create the workflow that can be reused. It uses Apple Intelligence so you can ask it things in a sentence form to do.
I also added a lot of new features to the text based editing such as speaker detection, silence detection, etc. It should be fully on par with Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve's text based editing now.
Anything you all would want to see added?
This is WILD. 🤯
Why? Well, none of the techniques he's using are exactly new.
I was experimenting with code injection in the original FCPX Hacks days.
We even "injected" our "hacks" into the Final Cut Pro Command Editor:
We manipulated things at the file system level to get access to things we shouldn't have access to:
It was an exciting time. It was the wild west. This is where CommandPost was born.
But eventually, I realised that FCPX Hacks was too scary for most people, and Apple HATED it.
Eventually, FCPX Hacks became CommandPost, and we dropped a lot of the features that manipulated the Final Cut Pro Application Bundle.
Jump forward a decade, and now CommandPost is the boring old school app that has a lot of users, and the developers (i.e. me) moves slowly, and FCPBridge COMPLETELY changes the game.
It's simple, but insanely clever, and it literally changes the game.
For example, this genius moves FAST:
...within four hours, we now have Timeline Batch Export that's FAR superior than CommandPost.
Why waste time building Workflow Extensions and external tools, when you could just fix and completely revamp Final Cut Pro directly?
But the crazy part isn't what elliotttate has built, it's HOW it was built.
elliotttate is using LLMs to do INSANELY awesome things.
And already, people like Knut Hake are using lessons learned from FCPBridge to build new and exciting tools.
This is literally day one - and it's already HUGELY exciting and amazing.
Imagine what will happen when someone like Alex4D applies the same techniques to Apple Motion!
This is exciting times, but it's also kinda scary times.
LLMs can now do ANYTHING, and can be driven by ANYONE.
Anyone can make these tools, anyone can change the game overnight.
This blog post mostly focusses on Final Cut Pro, but the same techniques could be applied to ANY Mac Application.
And now that LLMs have full control over Final Cut Pro, the question is... why do LLMs even NEED Final Cut Pro, OR human editors?
Certainly very exciting... and crazy times ahead!
Should YOU try FCPBridge? Well, that's completely up to you.
elliotttate writes:
Is This Legal / Safe to Use?
A few things worth clarifying up front -- this isn't for everyone, but it's very easy to set up if you do want to try it.
On reverse engineering and the EULA: Reverse engineering for interoperability is explicitly protected under the DMCA (17 U.S.C. § 1201(f)) and similar laws in the EU. This is the same legal basis that allows tools like Homebrew, Hammerspoon, and countless other macOS utilities that hook into Apple apps. Apple's EULA doesn't override federal law. That said, FCPBridge doesn't really involve reverse engineering in the traditional sense -- once the library is loaded, Final Cut Pro exposes all of its own classes and methods through the Objective-C runtime. There's no decompilation required.
On "injecting code": What FCPBridge does is no different from what accessibility tools, screen readers, and automation utilities do every day on macOS.
DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIESis a documented Apple mechanism -- it's not an exploit. Apps like BetterTouchTool, Alfred, and Bartender all inject into running processes using the same techniques.On Apple disabling your Apple ID: There is no precedent for Apple disabling an Apple ID for running a modified local app. Apple can't even distinguish between "ran a modded app" and "loaded a dylib for debugging in Xcode," which developers do constantly. Apple's focus is on protecting the App Store and code signing for distribution -- not policing what developers do on their own machines.
The real risk is the same as any unsigned software: make sure you trust the source. The code is fully open, the techniques are well-established, and nothing here is novel or dangerous from a security perspective.
On a personal note -- I've been frustrated by how little progress Final Cut Pro has made over the years, and my hope is that this project can help it finally get some of the features it desperately needs. There's a huge precedent in modding software and games. I've modded quite a few games where the developers officially adopted features based on community work. It can be a really productive relationship where proof of concepts demonstrate what would be genuinely useful to add officially.
My suggestion... if you're comfortable with macOS Terminal and tinkering - then go nuts. It's SUPER fun to play with.
If you've never opened up macOS Terminal - then I would probably hold off for now until FCPBridge has a nice website and goes more "mainstream".
If you're a nerd that's coded your own stuff in Lua with CommandPost - then this is for YOU! Let's see what crazy stuff we can make!
Onwards & Upwards! 🤯
LUT Robot v1.1.1 (Build 7) is now available on the Mac App Store! 🥳
This release contains the following change:
- Updated to FCPXMLKit v1.1.3 and Swift 6.
You can download and learn more on the LUT Robot website.
captionTranslator v1.0.4 is out now with the following bug fixes:
- Bug fix for translating to Spanish
You can learn more and download on the Mac App Store.