I film on my phone. Claude does the edit. The video editing playbook, free.

What you end up with

You film on your phone and drop the clips in a folder. Claude listens to every word, cuts the dead air, times the captions to your voice, puts your hook on screen, adds the graphics, and renders a vertical video ready to post. You watch it and say what is wrong until it is right. That part stays yours.

Honest version: this is not one click in the Claude app. It runs in Claude Code, on your computer, with a free video tool called HyperFrames. Setting it up takes an afternoon. After that a video is a few messages.

What you need

• A paid Claude plan, so you can use Claude Code.
• Claude Code: the Code tab in the Claude desktop app, or the terminal version from claude.com/claude-code.
• Your brand guide, if you have one, and 10 videos you wish yours looked like.

1. One prompt sets the whole thing up

Make an empty folder for your videos, open Claude Code in it, and paste this. It installs what it needs, builds the folders, and tells you if something is missing on your machine.

Set this folder up so you can edit my vertical talking-head videos.

Do all of this yourself and tell me in plain English when it is done:

1. Check I have Node.js. If I do not, walk me through installing it.
2. Install HyperFrames and confirm it runs.
3. Make these folders: footage (my clips straight off my phone), exports (finished videos), brand (my fonts, colors and rules).
4. Set a standing rule for yourself: phone video is often missing keyframes and stalls a render, so re-encode every clip into a clean copy before you edit it, and keep the audio at broadcast loudness.
5. Tell me exactly what to drop in each folder to get started.

Do not edit anything yet.

2. Teach it your taste

This is the part that makes the videos yours instead of generic, and it is a conversation, not a form. Put your brand guide in brand/ if you have one, then find 10 videos you wish yours looked like. They do not have to be ranked. What matters is that you say what you like about each one.

I am going to teach you how my videos should look.

In brand/ is my brand guide. Read it and pull out the fonts, the colors and anything about how we write.

I am also going to paste 10 links to videos I like. For each one I will say what I like about it: the captions, the pacing, the way the graphics come in, whatever it is.

Ask me questions until you understand the look. Push back if two things I said contradict each other.

Then write brand/edit-rules.md in my words: the frame, the captions, the hook, the graphics, the motion, and a Never list. Show it to me before you use it.

You end up with a file like this, in your language, not mine. Claude reads it before every edit, and you add a line to it every time you correct something.

# How to edit my videos

## The frame
- 1080 x 1920, vertical. Never crop my face out of the middle.
- Cut the silence before I start, and any pause longer than a quarter second.
- Only cut between sentences. Never stitch words inside a sentence.

## Captions
- 1 to 4 words at a time, timed to how I actually speak.
- [your font], [your color]. Never over my face.
- One emphasis word per card, in [your accent color].

## The hook
- On screen inside the first 1.5 seconds. One line, the way a person would say it.

## Graphics
- When I name a tool, show its logo, not its name typed out.
- One style for every graphic: [describe it].
- Real numbers only. Never put anything on screen that is not true.

## Motion
- Zoom only on the words I stress. Never on a timer.
- Something changes on screen at least every 2 seconds.

## Never
- No stock footage. No fake screenshots. No music I did not pick.
- Nothing on screen that names a client.

3. Edit the first one

Drop a clip in footage and say this. Expect the first edit to be 80 percent right.

Edit the clip in footage/ into a vertical short.

Read brand/edit-rules.md first and follow it exactly.

The hook is: "[your first line]"

Then tell me three things: how much dead air you cut, how many captions there are, and anything you were unsure about. Do not post it anywhere. Put the file in exports/ and I will watch it.

4. The part everyone skips: the review loop

The first version is never the one. Say what is wrong in plain English and it fixes it. Real notes I have given it:

• "The text at the top is ugly. Mock up three other styles on my own frames and show me."
• "That zoom is off the beat. Only zoom on the word I stress."
• "You cut me off mid-sentence at 12 seconds. Only cut between sentences."
• "The caption is covering my mouth. Move it down."
• "It says clod. I said Claude. Fix it everywhere."

Every note you give it, add to your rules file. After a few videos it stops making that mistake, and the first version starts landing at 95 percent.

5. Then do a week at a time

Here are [number] clips in footage/. Edit all of them the same way, following brand/edit-rules.md.

For each one: the hook is the first sentence I say, unless I tell you otherwise.

When they are done, give me a list: file name, length, and anything you were unsure about. I will watch them before anything goes out.

What goes wrong, and the fix

• A render hangs partway. That is the keyframe problem. Remind it to re-encode every clip before editing.
• A word comes out wrong in the captions. Give it a fixes list: "clod" is "Claude", "AT" is "a T". It applies them every time.
• A file that looks finished is the old one. Have it check the file time and the last frames before it tells you a video is ready.
• It gets flowery. Tell it plainly: captions are what I said, word for word, not a rewrite.

Before you post

• Watch the whole thing once, end to end, with the sound on.
• Check the file was written after your last change.
• Check the last two seconds. That is where a bad render shows first.

None of this makes you a video editor. It makes the editing cheap enough that you post every day. You still have to know what good looks like. It does the work. You are the taste.