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Palmier Pro

Open-source macOS video editor built for AI

Details

External ID
49022911
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Palmier
Website domain
github.com
Launched
July 23, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
191
Upvotes percentile
0.9611708482676224
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hi HN, we are Marcos and Harrison, cofounders of Palmier (https://palmier.io). We are building Palmier Pro, an open source macOS video editor, with built-in AI generation and a local MCP server that connects to your agent. Here are a few demos:- Making some AI transitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbM_-eR1GX4- Multicam editing with Codex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjS2q2LT1q8- Cutting long form clips into shorts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR66eN2ouuQWe built Palmier Pro as an internal tool when we were making AI launch videos for other startups. The main problem it solved in the beginning was the back-and-forth between AI generation platform and video editor. The iteration loop was awkward: AI videos → download → import to editor → edit → realize we need to change the AI video → repeat. So we built a minimal video editor where we could let Claude generate AI videos inside the editor.As we gave more and more tools to the agent, we wanted to push to see what else agents can do in the video editing space. So today, your Claude/Codex can:- Manage projects inside Palmier Pro- Import media from a public URL or filesystem to the project, and organize them in folders- Search media (by embedding footages using SigLIP2 running locally)- Edit the timeline (tracks/clips/keyframes operations)- Generate images, videos, sound effects, captions, music- Export videosThere are two ways for LLMs to interact with the editor: by connecting to the local MCP server, or using the in-app chat. Both use the same tools and APIs exposed by the video editor.We have seen people using MCP server to connect to their own workflow to automate massive-scale video editing (e.g. given this same podcast style, replicate it with other footages that I have). We have also seen people using the in-app chat where it lives closer to the editor UI, with lower latency for faster iteration.We don't believe that AI is going to replace human creativity (nor should it), but where it can really help is in automating the gruntwork in video editing. Most work in the editing workflow is more mechanical than creative. Our vision is to build a video editor where AI can enable more individuals to create.Throughout our experiments, AI is not very good at creative editing, but given a pattern (transcription-based, beat-based), it can do a decent job at rough cut.We built Palmier Pro in Swift as an MVP because we wanted better performance and minimal dependencies (no nodejs/webview), with some native macOS APIs like SpeechAnalyzer and CoreML for us to run some models locally. We use SpeechAnalyzer for local transcriber, SigLip2 to embed video frames, beat_this for beat detection, Silero VAD for silence detection, all running locally. The tradeoff is that we don't support Linux or Windows at the moment.Palmier Pro is open source and free to try out (macOS 26 only at the moment, though - we'll support more platforms over time, but for now are focusing on iterating the core product).No login required except for the AI generation features, which route requests to our backend. We are offering free credits on sign up so you can try out the AI generation as well.We'd love to hear your feedback!

Enrichment

Theme
AI video creation and editing tools
Vertical
Media & entertainment
Function
Dev tools
Audience
Prosumer
AI stance
AI feature
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
video editor for macos built for ai workflows
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

No Building a full non-linear desktop video editor for macOS with frame-accurate timeline scrubbing, Metal/AVFoundation hardware acceleration, and integrated AI generation requires deep systems and multimedia engineering.

What it would actually take: The core architecture requires Swift/Metal or C++ with AVFoundation or ffmpeg for real-time video compositing, audio mixing, timeline rendering, and hardware-accelerated decoding. Additionally, it embeds a local Model Context Protocol (MCP) server communicating with local/remote diffusion models. Creating high-performance, non-linear video editing software requires specialized desktop media pipeline and GPU compute expertise that vibe coding cannot produce.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Donkey Cut, FableCut, DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro

Concerns raised: Interface dense and cluttered, difficult to navigate, AI automation suppresses creative decision-making and subtle artistic choices, Video generation remains imprecise, unsuitable as final output, Uncertainty about long-term pricing of video generation APIs, Time-consuming rendering and file management overhead

Feature requests: Browser tab integrated into editor for Grok subscription workflow, Code-based video rendering (MoviePy, Remotion) for agent edits, Improved file organization to avoid duplication with downloads, MCP integration for workflow enhancements, Simplified UI with less cluttered panels

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 110 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #10 of 111 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 264 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

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