AkariLabs/akari-video: AKARI Video — AI video editing tool (Theia-based monorepo) · Site: akari.video · Asset library: akari.video/lab

AKARI Video is a video editor where an AI agent does the editing. The app is not a place to edit — it is a place to review and fix. Give the agent your footage and it assembles everything from analysis and cuts to captions, narration, and BGM, while you look at the result and correct only where it drifts from your intent.

Intent is human. Hands are AI.

Status: under construction — the desktop shell is mid-migration (the previous shell implementation is preserved at akari-video-tauri). The headless path (opencode + Claude Code + Cursor Agent + skills) is usable today.

Why this exists

Throw video editing at an AI "to save time" and you get mass-produced content nobody can call their own. Do it all yourself and cutting, transcription, captions, and audio cleanup eat the whole day.

AKARI Video was built to break that trade-off.

• Humans do exactly two things — say what you want to make, and check that the result

• Review-and-tweak is the shortest path — the edit is nearly finished when you open it.

• Your decisions stay on record — approval gates and decision logs keep "what the human

How it works — the save file is everything

The agent and the human collaborate on the same save data (file contracts).

• edit.json is the single source of truth — instead of stacking tool calls, the agent

• No presets for expression — captions, titles, shapes, and 3D are drawn freely by AI in

• Human actions land in data too — drags and value tweaks are written back to edit.json,

• Headless-first — everything from planning to export works with opencode, Claude Code, or

The workflow is packaged as skills, one per stage:

flowchart LR
    A["Plan<br/>research-plan"] --> B["Analyze footage<br/>analyze-footage"]
    B --> C["Edit plan<br/>edit-plan"]
    C --> D["Captions / Narration<br/>overlay-authoring<br/>generate-narration"]
    D --> E["QA & Review<br/>edit-lint<br/>address-review"]
    E --> F["Export<br/>render-cut"]
    F --> G["Harvest assets<br/>harvest-asset"]
    G -.assets feed the next plan.-> A
    classDef stage fill:#1a1a1a,stroke:#ff8a00,color:#ffffff
    class A,B,C,D,E,F,G stage

Export now defaults to the v2 OSR engine on macOS. Pass --engine legacy to use the previous compositing path; Windows continues to default to legacy for now.

Getting started — four entrances

Whichever entrance you start from, everything converges on the same file contracts (under .akari/). Stop halfway and you can resume from any other entrance.

| Entrance | What it is | How to launch | |---|---|---| | Terminal | One-line installer (full setup — browser preview included) → akari.sh | curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AkariLabs/akari-video/main/install.sh \| bash — CLI only: npm i -g akari-video | | Inside an opencode session | Skills auto-discovered from .opencode/skills/ | Just say "I want to start a new video project" | | Inside a Claude Code session | /akari command + SessionStart hook in plugin/ | Type /akari in a session, or just say "I want to start a new video project" | | Inside Cursor Agent | Skills auto-discovered from .cursor/skills/ (monorepo) or project adapters | Open the repo or project folder in Cursor and say "I want to start a new video project" | | Desktop app | Theia-based desktop shell | From the connect button on the Start screen |

npm i -g akari-video never uses sudo. If it fails with EACCES (permission error),

prefer install.sh above (user-space, no admin password needed) or configure an npm

user prefix instead. The desktop app provisions its own akari CLI automatically —

no separate install needed there.

First steps: docs/getting-started.md.

Documentation

• Introduction — philosophy and the big picture
• Getting Started — create your first project
• Guides — task-based guides: analyze footage, plan the edit, export, …
• Skills Catalog — the 23-skill map: what each owns and what it connects to
• How-to — connections & API keys, project structure, resuming a session
• Reference — specs for file contracts such as edit.json
• Entry point: docs/README.md

[!NOTE]

Reference documents (data-contract specs and design notes) are currently Japanese-only.

Opening an issue for a contract you need in English is welcome.

Layout

• apps/shell/ — Theia-based desktop shell
• packages/ — shell-independent libraries (schemas, frame engine, surface runtime, akari-launcher)
• templates/ — project scaffolds (include .opencode/ config)
• skills/ — agent-side stage skills (23 of them)
• plugin/ — Claude Code plugin bundle (skill pack + SessionStart hook + /akari)
• catalog/ — curated add-on catalog (reference-only distribution)
• docs/ — user docs + spec contracts

License

The code is under the MIT License. Assets handled via assets/ / catalog/ follow the license notice in each item's meta.json. Bundled third-party binaries (ffmpeg / ffprobe, GPL builds) are documented in NOTICE.md.

Star History