capcut-cli

capcut-cli

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Disclaimer: This is an independent, community-maintained project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by CapCut, JianYing, or ByteDance Ltd. "CapCut" and "JianYing" (剪映) are trademarks of ByteDance Ltd. All product names, logos, and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here only for identification (nominative) purposes.

An independent CLI for CapCut / JianYing that any LLM agent can drive — zero dependencies, no server, both namespaces in one binary.

JSON in, JSON out: every command reads and writes the local draft store directly, with no MCP server or HTTP daemon. On newer CapCut versions it detects and synchronizes every readable timeline target instead of assuming draft_content.json is the only source of truth. That gives any model (Claude, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi) a deterministic boundary for inspection, building, subtitles, captions, translation, and long-form cuts.

Use it three ways:

• CLI — npm install -g capcut-cli, then capcut <command> <project>
• Library — import { loadDraft, lintDraft, saveDraft } from "capcut-cli" (typed, zero-dep)
• Queue runner — capcut serve reads JSONL jobs from stdin, for n8n / Make / Coze

New in v0.14.0: duplicate a segment onto an overlay track above its source (duplicate), repair missing draft registration on existing drafts (register), read + edit the source-material crop (crop --ratio | --rect), per-word keyword emphasis and per-cue colour cycling for captions (--highlight-words, --keyword-size, --color-cycle on caption/import-srt), and UTF-8 BOM tolerance on every file the CLI reads. Full details in the changelog.

New in v0.13.0: timeline-mirror repair for CapCut ≥ 8.7 (sync-timelines), word-level subtitle export (export-srt --granularity word, SRT + VTT), CapCut-native keyframe easing (keyframe --easing), deterministic scene-cut detection (detect-scenes), portable text-style presets (make-preset + --preset), and lint --fix auto-repair. Full details in the changelog.

Install

Prerequisites: Node ≥ 18 (built-ins only — no native modules). Optional tools unlock specific commands: Whisper for caption, FFmpeg for render, ffprobe for automatic media metadata, and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for translate.

npm install -g capcut-cli      # or: npx capcut-cli <command>

Build from source instead: git clone https://github.com/renezander030/capcut-cli && cd capcut-cli && npm install && npm run build (then npm link to expose capcut).

Quickstart

capcut doctor                                  # verify Node, FFmpeg, whisper, draft dirs
capcut quickstart my-first --video clip.mp4    # create + add input + lint, prints the "open in CapCut" step
capcut info ./my-first/                         # inspect the draft (add -H for a table)

Then open the project in CapCut to review and render. Every short-video platform forbids automated upload, so the publish click stays human.

Commands

JSON by default (pipe to jq); add -H for a human-readable table. Pass --jianying to use the JianYing enum namespace. Run capcut <command> --help for full flags.