Multi-lane timeline
Text, overlay, video and audio lanes with trim, split, move, duplicate and copy-paste. Multi-select, replace media in place, and undo/redo across everything — including edits made by AI.
Features
A video editor for Mac, built for short-form ads
Every feature in ClipForge exists to get an indie developer from screen recording to posted TikTok ad — by hand on a real timeline, or with an AI agent driving.
The editor
A real timeline, tuned for 9:16
ClipForge is a native Mac app with a serious multi-lane editor underneath the AI — because a first draft is only useful if you can polish it.
Keyframes with easing
Animate position, scale, rotation and opacity with eased keyframes — emphasis zooms, slides and reveals without leaving the inspector.
Speed, pitch preserved
0.25×–4× per-clip speed with pitch-preserved audio, frame-step nudging and JKL transport for landing cuts on the exact frame.
Crop, flip, rotate
Per-clip crop with aspect presets (free, 1:1, 9:16, 16:9), flip and rotate, fit or fill — plus image clips with duration control for screenshots.
Motion and looks
Transitions between clips, Ken Burns motion presets for stills and screen recordings, and color-grade presets that keep footage consistent.
Beat-accurate snapping
Snap to clips, the playhead — and to music beats. Audio waveforms render on every clip so you can see exactly where the drop lands.
Voice, captions & sound
Sound design without the studio
Short-form is watched with the sound on. ClipForge handles the voice, the words on screen and the music — entirely on-device.
On-device voiceover
Text-to-speech that runs on your Mac — free, offline, private. Captions are synced word-for-word from the TTS engine's own timings, not from transcription guessing afterwards.
Automatic music ducking
Music dips under the voiceover and rises back automatically, so speech always reads clearly over the track.
Auto-captions
On-device speech recognition with word-level timestamps drives TikTok-style captions — word-highlight and karaoke rendering, editable word by word.
Legible by default
Plate, outline and shadow caption styles plus built-in WCAG contrast linting. Captions land inside the TikTok safe zone by default.
Music & SFX library
Bundled royalty-free music and sound effects, tagged and searchable, licensed for the videos you export. Pick a vibe, not a lawyer.
Per-clip audio control
Volume and mute per clip, waveforms on every pill, and a dedicated audio lane for music and SFX.
The accelerators
What makes ClipForge fast
The features that turn a Mac video editor into an app-ad machine: content that's already made, an agent that assembles it, and gates that catch weak ads before you post them.
create_ad — one-shot composition
App name + pitch + screenshots + brand color in; a complete hook–proof–CTA ad out, with palette derived, voiceover synthesized and music and SFX placed.
Built-in quality gates
check_ad scores pacing, hook strength, CTA and audio dynamics; check_legibility lints caption contrast against WCAG. Weak spots are named, not vibes.
MCP server for AI editing
Every editor feature has an MCP tool, so Claude Code or any MCP client can drive ClipForge end-to-end — including headless export to a folder you authorize.
UGC hook library
Short creator-style clips indexed by description, role and mood — the proven openers of TikTok-style ads, ready to drop in front of your demo.
Ad-tuned export presets
1080×1920 presets tuned for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, rendered on-device with AVFoundation.
Projects synced, media private
Sign in and your lightweight project files sync to the cloud; work as a guest and everything stays local. Raw footage never leaves your Mac either way.
Want the AI to do the first pass?
See how Claude Code drives ClipForge through its MCP server, or download ClipForge from the Mac App Store.