GroundSlate Has No Timeline. PilotCut Keeps One for You and Your Agent

You want an agent to do the heavy lifting on your edits, and you still want to see the cut. On September 9, 2026 COEY launched GroundSlate, a free Mac app that gives Claude, ChatGPT and other agents local MCP tools to find, cut and render video. Its founder put the design in one line: "GroundSlate does not have a timeline." PilotCut keeps the timeline, and your agent works on it with you.

What GroundSlate does

• An MCP server with no timeline. COEY launched GroundSlate on 2026-09-09 as a video editor driven by an AI assistant. The launch release listed 385 local MCP tools, and the founder said: "GroundSlate does not have a timeline" (launch release).
• 412 tools today. The product page lists 412 tools and names Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT Desktop and Cursor as clients (GroundSlate).
• A searchable library. It indexes transcripts, scene descriptions, faces and places so an agent can find a moment by what was said or shown (GroundSlate).
• Local generation. It generates voice, video, music and sound effects on the Mac with open models (GroundSlate).
• Hand-off files. It writes EDL and FCPXML to hand a cut to another editor (GroundSlate).
• Requirements and plans. macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon, 8 GB of unified memory and 16 GB for the default vision model. The free plan covers one Mac and 2,500 library items, and its renders carry the COEY mark. Pro is a yearly plan (GroundSlate).

What a timeline gives you when an agent edits

An agent that assembles and renders a film saves you the dragging. A timeline answers a different question: what exactly changed, and can you move it.

• See the cut before it lands. Ask for a cut, a silence pass or filler-word removal, and PilotCut returns the list of changes first. Nothing moves until the agent applies it.
• Fix one edit by hand. Nudge a cut point or trim a clip yourself, then ask the agent to continue from your version.
• Read back every step. 250 edit history entries show what the agent did. The agent reads the same history, so it can explain its last pass.
• Leave notes the agent respects. Drop a marker for the agent. It can resolve your marker and never deletes it. Each marker carries its origin and a confidence value.
• Cuts that respect breath. Transcript cuts snap to breath-safe points, and the agent proposes each cut from evidence.
• Hand off to Final Cut. The agent can write the timeline as FCPXML 1.11 with absolute media paths.

How it is built

• 83 purpose-built tools, one surface. The buttons, the command line and the agent call the same 83 tools, shaped by tens of thousands of hours of video-editing practice, through the same mutation coordinator. An agent edit undoes exactly like a click.
• Propose, then commit, on named actions. The timeline cut, the silence, word and dead-air cuts, generated chapters, caption import and patch, and voiceover and camera replacement return a plan on the first call and mutate nothing. A second call applies it. Removing a track applies at once, and so does accepting a B-roll slot.
• The approval step is in the chat panel. The server never waits for a human. The Core Agent chat panel gates each tool on its risk tier. An agent on the CLI or a third-party MCP client is not gated and can send both calls.
• A dry run where it fits. The canvas and layout tools and the effect tool return the result without writing it. Asset and track tools have no dry run.
• A filmstrip check. The agent can pull a filmstrip of the timeline and look at the frames before it hands the edit back.

GroundSlate vs PilotCut for agent editing

Facts

Questions

What is GroundSlate?

A Mac app from COEY, launched on 2026-09-09, that gives AI assistants local MCP tools to search a video library, generate media, cut and render. It has no timeline by design (launch release).

Does GroundSlate have more tools than PilotCut?

Its product page lists 412 tools. PilotCut has 83 editing tools, and the same 83 drive the buttons, the command line and the agent, so every agent edit is one you can also make and undo by hand.

Why keep a timeline if the agent does the editing?

So you can see what changed and move it. On a timeline you read the cut list before it lands, fix one cut by hand, and scroll back through the agent's edits.

Can PilotCut hand my edit to Final Cut?

Yes. The agent can write the project timeline as FCPXML 1.11 with absolute media paths.

Does PilotCut wait for my approval before the agent cuts?

The server never waits for a human. A cut returns its plan first and applies on a second call. In the Core Agent chat panel that second call is gated on the tool's risk tier. An agent on the CLI can send both calls itself.

What does PilotCut cost?

PilotCut is free during beta. There is no published price after the beta. Your agent bills to the plan you already pay for.

Also read

• Mirage Tesseract vs PilotCut
• video-use for Claude Code vs PilotCut
• Descript filler and silence cuts vs PilotCut propose-then-commit
• Edit videos with AI agents

Conclusion

PilotCut puts the agent you already pay for on a timeline you can read, adjust and undo, with a plan before the cuts that change meaning. Free during beta.

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