AI assistant¶
You can ask an AI assistant to go through your shots and put a reel together: build me a 90-second reel of creature work, nothing restricted. It reads the tags, ratings, notes and interest ranges you already added, looks at the shots it is choosing between, picks and orders them, and hands back a reel you review in ShotWork. From that reel it can write a timeline for Resolve, Premiere or Final Cut, or render a video to watch.
The assistant is one you already use. ShotWork includes no AI model and never calls one; the assistant does the thinking, and ShotWork does the checking and the building.
How the work is divided¶
The assistant decides which shots fit the brief, reading a client's words against your own tags; the order, and what to lead with; how long each shot holds, and which part of it plays; whether and where to cut on the beat, and which song to attach; and a name for the reel, with a note on why it cut it that way.
ShotWork checks and builds: that every shot it names exists, that every hold fits inside its shot, that restricted shots stay out unless you allowed them, every frame number, the length against a budget, and where the files go. An assistant never writes a timeline file itself, never counts frames, and never picks a folder, which is why a timeline it proposes opens cleanly in your editor.
What it can do¶
| Ask it to | What it uses |
|---|---|
| Tell you what is in your library: how many shots, which tags you use, the projects, companies and roles, how your ratings spread, how many shots no reel has used | The library summary |
| Find shots by tag, rating, project, company, role, length, any preset field, whether they have an interest range, or whether any reel has used them | A search |
| Look at a shot: its thumbnail, or a strip of frames through it, once you allow pictures | A thumbnail request, which returns pictures |
| Read a song's beats and downbeats | The beat grid ShotWork already analyzes for the reel timeline |
| List your songs and your overlay templates | The music library and the template store |
| List your reels, or read one in full | The library's reel list |
| Write a reel from the shots it picked, with a song, fades, gaps, color cards, a title card and an overlay template | A draft |
| Change a reel it or you made: swap shots, shorten it, add the song | A revision |
| Write a timeline from a reel, for Resolve, Premiere or Final Cut | A timeline export |
| Render a reel to a video | A render |
| Say which ShotWork it is connected to and what that build can see | The server's own status |
What the assistant can ask ShotWork for has each request in full, in the words the assistant itself reads.
A draft can hold gaps, but a video cannot be rendered from a reel with one: the render says so, and the assistant fills or removes the gap first. A timeline carries gaps as gaps.
What it never does¶
- Edit your shot selects. It cannot mark, rename, tag or rate a shot, and it cannot delete anything. It changes reels, and only reels listed in your library.
- See your footage as video. It sees single frames, only of shots it asks about, only when it asks, and only if you turned on Let the assistant see thumbnails of my shots. Until then it sees text alone.
- Use restricted shots unless you ask for them.
- Choose where files go. Everything it builds lands in one folder,
ShotWork Reels, in your home folder. - Design an overlay. It uses the templates you made, on the shots you ask for. A timeline or video it makes carries the band and the cards, drawn the same way ShotWork draws them.
Where to start¶
The assistant is part of the paid license; the free tier keeps everything else. See The free tier and your license.
- Connect an AI assistant: Claude Desktop, from one window in ShotWork.
- Ask for a reel: how to brief it, and how to review what comes back.
- What stays on your machine: exactly what the assistant can read.
ChatGPT Desktop can do the same; see Connect ChatGPT Desktop. A coding agent such as Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code connects by hand; see Connect a coding agent.