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What stays on your machine

Your footage never leaves your computer as video. An assistant connected to ShotWork reads the text you wrote about your shots, and it can write reel files into one folder only. Whether it may also see a picture of a shot is your decision, and it is off until you turn it on.

How it works

The assistant starts a small ShotWork server on your computer and asks it questions. The server reads your library: the shot selects and reels listed there, the details you entered in them, your music library and your overlay templates. It answers with text.

For each shot, the assistant can read the shot's name and the shot selects it belongs to; its length, frame rate and frame size; its tags, rating and notes; every preset field, such as project, company, year, role and assets; its interest range, and how many reels use it; and whether it is restricted.

It never receives video, sound, anything outside your library, or a picture unless you allowed pictures.

ShotWork itself includes no AI model, calls no AI service, and needs no account. Whatever ShotWork tells the assistant becomes part of your conversation with it, under that assistant's own terms.

Pictures

The assistant can ask to see a shot: its thumbnail, or a few frames spread through it. That helps it choose what leads a reel and which of two similar shots to keep. A frame it asks for is sent to the assistant, and from there to the service that runs it, the same as anything you paste into that conversation. Some artists do not want a frame of their work to go there, so this is off until you say otherwise.

  • Let the assistant see thumbnails of my shots is the switch, in File › Connect an AI Assistant… under What it may see, and again as the AI assistant row of Settings › Timeline Colors…. It saves the moment you change it and takes effect on the assistant's next question. Nothing needs restarting.
  • With it off, a request for a picture is refused, and the refusal tells the assistant that you have not allowed pictures. It works from the text instead.
  • With it on, the assistant sees a picture only of a shot it asks about, and only when it asks. A restricted shot is still refused unless you said restricted work may appear.

A thumbnail the assistant asks for goes into ShotWork's own thumbnail cache, where ShotWork would have put it. That file stays on your computer; the copy sent to the assistant is what leaves.

Restricted work

Searches leave restricted shots out unless you ask for them, though the library summary still reports how many exist. A picture of a restricted shot, or a reel with one in it, is refused the same way until you say restricted work may appear.

Where it writes

Only into ShotWork Reels in your home folder. The assistant names a reel; ShotWork turns the name into a safe file name and chooses the folder. The timelines and videos it makes from a reel land in the same folder, with a <name>_assets folder beside a timeline for the overlay images. The assistant cannot write anywhere else, and it cannot change your shot selects.

It can change a reel: the reels it drafted, and any reel listed in your library, since you may ask it to shorten one you made yourself. It cannot open a reel file you did not list.

A song it analyzes goes into the beat_grids folder of ShotWork's app data, the same saved analysis the reel timeline reads. That is a file on your computer, not something sent anywhere.

What this means when you…

  • …disconnect: ShotWork's entry leaves the assistant's settings, and nothing else there changes. Restart the assistant.
  • …mark a shot restricted mid-conversation: save the shot selects, and the next question already respects it. The library is read fresh every time.
  • …turn pictures off mid-conversation: the next request for one is refused. Pictures already sent stay in that conversation.
  • …share a file the assistant made: a reel or a timeline holds no footage; they name the video files on your computer, the way any timeline does. A video it rendered is your footage, cut together, with your overlay on it.
  • …ask what it is connected to: it can report which ShotWork it is talking to, which library file that build reads, and where it writes. Quote that answer if you ask for help.