Kino launches a video editor that Claude Code and Codex drive
Founder Luke Igel says Kino stores, cuts and reviews footage in one place, with editing decisions living as code on a timeline that people can override.
Key takeaways
- Luke Igel announced Kino on X on October 29, 2026, a video editor built for teams and AI agents to share.
- Kino connects to Claude Code and the Codex CLI through a local MCP server, and the company says its desktop app has to stay open while an agent works.
- Kino lists the full editor as free forever, with Pro at $20 a month, down from a $25 list price.
- Igel says the launch edit ran 5 or more agents on the timeline at once, his doing rotoscoping VFX while a colleague's swarm handled sound design.
Kino AI founder Luke Igel launched Kino on October 29, 2026, a video editor built for teams and AI agents to share.
Igel announced it on X that day: "Introducing Kino: make videos end-to-end with Claude Code and Codex. Drop your footage, get highlights, edit together, send links for feedback, and let your agents cook. AI is becoming a great creative partner. Kino is a new home for your team and agents to collaborate."
Kino is a desktop video editor with downloads live for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu. The company describes one library holding every clip, each one transcribed, described shot by shot and tagged with who appears in it, so a project opens the same on any machine. Editing decisions live as code on a real timeline, according to Kino, and a person can override them by hand.
Agents connect through a local MCP server. Kino's documentation gives the setup commands for Claude Code and the Codex CLI, both pointing at the same address on the editor's own machine, and notes that the desktop app has to stay open while an agent works. The company's startups page says the server exposes 40 tools and that Kino is built on Remotion.
For the launch edit, Igel said the timeline carried several agents at once. "Kino is multiplayer," he wrote. "For our launch I had 5+ agents editing the timeline while Donald had his own swarm working a few minutes further down. His agent did sound design, mine did the rotoscoping VFX, and we both made small fixes by hand."
Kino's pricing page lists the full editor as free forever, with unlimited imports and exports, real-time collaboration and connecting your own agents. Pro runs $20 a month, down from a $25 list price, and adds shareable timeline links, AI search and editing through conversation.
Igel says the company started with an MIT documentary project, later put the tool on shows including Survivor and on A24's Beef, and rebuilt Kino in 2025 as a unified editor betting on editing in code, according to ABAB News's account of the launch. Kino AI was founded in 2022, went through Y Combinator's Summer 2023 batch and lists four employees in San Francisco; Igel studied at MIT and worked at NASA JPL and SpaceX.
Kino downloads for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu are available now at kino.ai.
Sources
- x.com - Igel's launch post (read via X's syndication API; the page itself returns 403 to automated readers)
- x.com - Igel's follow-up post on multi-agent editing
- kino.ai - official product page and download links
- kino.ai - agent connection commands and local MCP server
- kino.ai - free, Pro and Enterprise tiers
- kino.ai - October 2026 feature list
- kino.ai - Remotion base and MCP tool count
- ycombinator.com - founding year, batch, team size, founder background
- ababnews.com - secondary account of the announcement; Survivor and Beef attributed there to Igel