Haven
The video editor, reimagined: describe the edit you want and an agent builds the first cut on a real timeline you control.
- Role
- Solo build. Product, design, and engineering.
- Type
- AI product · creator tooling
- Status
- Mac beta (v0.1, Apple silicon)
01
The problem
I have been making content for years, and the same thing was always true: editing is the part that eats the time. Filming is the fun part and ideas are cheap, but turning raw footage into something worth posting is slow, repetitive work.
As agentic AI got genuinely capable, it became clear the next phase of editing is agentic: software that does the repetitive first pass so the creator spends their time on taste, not trimming. So I set out to build it.
02
Describe the edit
You tell Haven the story, pacing, mood and moments you want, in plain language: "create a 1.5 min intro for my 10 minute video", or something as specific as moving one clip to the end of a phase and holding the next until the three-minute mark.
The agent explores the library, chooses a shot order and edits the timeline, then reports exactly what it did. You keep talking to it the way you'd brief an editor.
03
Footage it understands
Before the first cut, Haven analyses every clip for scenes, motion, speech and visual changes, so a folder of raw footage becomes something you can search and the agent can reason about.
That evidence is what lets the agent pick the strongest moments instead of guessing, and it carries proof limits, so the agent knows when a judgement is soft.
04
Every decision on show
An agent you can't follow is an agent you can't trust with your edit. The live trace shows each step as it happens, and every step expands to explain why a moment was kept, cut or rearranged.
Planned trims, selects and sequence moves are visible before they land, so the timeline never becomes a black box.
05
Still a real editor
Haven makes the first pass, but what you get is a real, editable timeline: every clip, trim, caption and transform stays under manual control, with the inspector a click away.
When the cut is right, export a finished video, or hand the edit package to Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro and keep going in the tool you already know.
06
Key decisions
One command layer for everyone
Every edit, from a click in the UI, the built-in agent, or an outside agent, flows through the same typed command engine, with snapshots and undo/redo. The AI can't do anything the editor couldn't do by hand, and anything it does can be undone.
Editor first, AI second
I spent the early iterations making the timeline, playback and fundamentals genuinely good before layering the agent on top. A great AI editor has to be a great editor underneath.
Bring your own agent
Agent Connect on the Mac app exposes the editor over a local MCP server, so Codex, Claude Desktop or Cursor can drive the timeline too, behind per-project scope, permissions and an audit log.
Guarded mutations
Agent edits must name the timeline version they expect and pass a fail-closed gate; unknown tools are refused. It is slower to build that way, and it's what makes handing your footage to an agent reasonable.
07
Built with
- TypeScript
- Electron
- React
- Vite
- Fastify
- tRPC
- MCP
- Media analysis workers
08
Where it is
Haven 0.1 is a public, notarized beta for Apple silicon Macs, downloadable from creatorhaven.cc. The hosted web editor is next.