All guides

Claude Code line · stop 16 of 16 · 40 min · members

The Claude Resolve Stack. Your whole edit, from the terminal.

One line of code. 215 functions. Your entire DaVinci Resolve session running from your terminal — Claude Code × DaVinci Resolve. No menus, no shortcuts, just direction in plain English.

Free with an account

Sign in to read.

Membership is free: an account opens all 86 script pages. The Lab, Studio Canvas and the paid guides need the $99 pass, paid once. Already signed in on this browser? The page opens by itself.

Create a free account →What the $99 pass opens
01

Overview

One line of code. 215 functions.

Resolve has a scripting API nobody uses because the docs are a wall. An MCP server turns that wall into plain English.

Every cut you make in DaVinci Resolve is a function call underneath: add a clip, set an in point, move a marker, apply a LUT. The Resolve scripting API exposes all of it, but writing Python against it is slow and the documentation is a single text file. The Claude Resolve Stack puts an MCP server between Claude Code and that API, so you describe the edit and Claude makes the calls.

This is not an auto-editor that guesses. It is your hands, faster. You still decide the rhythm, the music, the frame. You stop clicking.

You direct in English. Resolve does what you said.

What you need before you start: Resolve open with a project, Claude Code installed, and twenty minutes. The Studio version unlocks the external scripting flag by default; the free version needs it switched on in Preferences → System → General.

02

Setup

Install it in one line.

The server registers itself with Claude Code. From then on, every session can see Resolve.

Open a terminal and run the installer. It finds your Resolve install, writes the MCP config into ~/.claude/settings.json and starts the bridge.

curl -fsSL https://ercin.io/stack/install.sh | sh

Check it works

Start Claude Code and type:

which project is open in Resolve, and how many timelines does it have?

If Claude answers with the project name, you are wired in. If it says it cannot reach Resolve, the scripting flag is off — see the note below.

If it fails

Resolve must be open first. The bridge attaches to the running app; it cannot launch it on Windows. On Mac it can, but give it 60 seconds.

Free Resolve: Preferences → System → General → External scripting using: Local.

03

The first cut

Import, assemble, sync.

Three prompts take you from a folder of clips to a rough cut with music.

Drop your footage in one folder. Then, in Claude Code:

  1. Import everything in ~/Footage/Nike-Spring into a bin called SOURCE.
  2. Make a 1080p 25fps timeline called ROUGH. Put the vertical clips on V2 scaled to fit, the horizontal ones on V1, 3 seconds each, in filename order.
  3. Add ~/Music/beat.wav on A1 and cut every clip to the nearest downbeat.

The third one is where it gets interesting: the server runs a beat detection pass on the audio, then moves every edit point to the closest beat. On a 40-clip timeline that is a two-hour job by hand and eleven seconds here.

Talk about what you see

You do not need the clip names. The clip with the red car — make it 2 seconds longer and push everything after it. works, because the server can read the thumbnails and match your description.

04

Color

A grade you can repeat.

Node trees are functions too. Build one, name it, apply it to a hundred clips.

Colour is where the API shines, because a node tree is just a list of operations. Ask for the structure once:

On every clip in ROUGH build this node tree: CST in (S-Log3 → DaVinci WG), Exposure, White balance, a FACE node with a qualifier on skin, LOOK, CST out to Rec.709.

Then grade one clip by hand, and:

Copy the LOOK node from clip 4 to every clip that was shot on the same camera.
Grade one. Say “all of them.”

Power grades, LUTs and DCTLs can all be applied by name. If you keep a folder of your own LUTs the server indexes them, so apply my Kodak 2383 LUT at 60% just works.

05

Delivery

Render every version at once.

9:16, 1:1, 16:9, three languages, two lengths. One sentence.

Delivery is the part everyone hates and the part the stack does best. Describe the matrix:

Render ROUGH as H.264: 16:9 at 1080p, 9:16 at 1080x1920 with a smart reframe on the subject, and 1:1 at 1080. Name them NIKE_{ratio}_{date}. Put them on the Desktop.

The server creates the render jobs with Resolve's own presets, queues them and tells you when the last one finishes. Reframing uses Resolve's subject tracking, so the vertical cut follows the person, not the centre of the frame.

Markers and notes

Client notes come back as timecodes. Paste them in: Add a red marker at every one of these timecodes with the note next to it. and go through them one by one with Jump to the next red marker.

06

Key takeaway

The edit is the conversation.

Once Resolve listens, the bottleneck is how clearly you can say what you want. That is the skill worth building.

You will notice, after a day of this, that you have stopped thinking in menus. You think in sentences: what goes where, how long, what it should feel like. That is what a director does. The stack does not make you a better editor; it removes the distance between your taste and the timeline.

  • Keep prompts about one thing. “Cut to the beat” then “now grade”, not both at once.
  • Name things early — bins, timelines, nodes. Names are what you refer back to.
  • Save a version before big moves: Duplicate ROUGH as ROUGH_v2 and work on v2.
  • When something looks wrong, ask what did you just change? — the server keeps a log.

Everything above is in the companion prompt file that ships with this guide, ready to paste.