AI Clipping
One API call: long video in → ranked vertical short clips out.
Each clip ships with a viral score (0–100), an opening hook line, a one-sentence "why it works" reason, and a hosted mp4 URL.
Underlying API: https://muapi.ai/playground/ai-clipping Reference implementation (open source): https://github.com/SamurAIGPT/AI-Youtube-Shorts-Generator
When to Use
- Auto-clip a podcast, interview, lecture, vlog, or stream into TikTok / Reels / Shorts.
- Extract the best 30–75s moments from any hosted video URL.
- Get face-tracked vertical (9:16), square (1:1), or portrait (4:5) crops without running ffmpeg locally.
If you only need raw timestamps for your own renderer, set --coords-only to skip cropping and just get the highlight ranges.
Agent Execution Protocol
Step 1 — Collect Inputs
If the user gave only a video URL, run with defaults — don't block on questions.
Step 2 — Verify Prerequisites
muapi-cliinstalled and authed (muapi auth configure)MUAPI_API_KEYavailable (env var ormuapi auth statuspasses)
That's it. No ffmpeg, no Python, no Whisper install, no LLM keys. Everything runs server-side.
Step 3 — Run the Skill
The script:
- Resolves
--videoto a hosted URL (uploads local files viamuapi upload fileif needed). - Calls
muapi edit clippingwith the supported parameters. - Polls until the job is done (or returns the
request_idimmediately under--async). - Prints a ranked summary and, if
--output-jsonis set, writes the full result.
What Happens Server-Side
The /ai-clipping endpoint internally runs the full pipeline so the agent doesn't have to:
- Transcribe with Whisper.
- Classify content type (podcast / interview / tutorial / vlog / lecture / monologue).
- Rank highlights through the virality framework:
- Hook moments — strong opening line that stops the scroll
- Emotional peaks — laughter, anger, vulnerability, awe
- Opinion bombs — spicy, contrarian, debate-bait takes
- Revelation moments — "wait, what?" reframes
- Conflict — disagreement, tension, callouts
- Quotable lines — tight, screenshot-worthy phrasing
- Story peaks — climax of a narrative arc
- Practical value — actionable insight a viewer will save
- Dedupe overlapping candidates by score.
- Top-N select and face-track auto-crop to the requested aspect ratio.
This is why the skill is small: the heavy lifting is on the API.
Quick Invocation Patterns
Defaults — three 9:16 clips:
Podcast — more clips, view in player:
Square clips for Instagram feed:
Just the timestamps (build your own renderer):
Async submit (returns request_id, poll later):
Local file:
Batch — urls.txt with one URL per line:
Aspect Ratio Picker
Default to 9:16 unless the platform is specified.
Output Schema
When --coords-only is set, each entry has start_time/end_time but no clip_url — render locally with ffmpeg.
When reporting back to the user, surface for each clip: rank, score, time range, title, hook, and clip URL.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Wrong aspect ratio for the platform — Shorts / TikTok / Reels are
9:16. Default to that. - Padding to hit
num_clips— if the API returns fewer survivors than requested, return what you have. Don't pretend. - Re-running on a 404'd clip URL — the same
request_idcan be re-fetched withmuapi predict wait <id>rather than re-clipping. - Trying to tune Whisper / chunk size / LLM prompts — those knobs aren't exposed; the endpoint handles them.
Failure Modes
- API key missing or rejected — surface the exact error; never fabricate a key.
- Job timed out — bump poll timeout (
--poll-timeout) and retry. - Source URL not reachable from the backend — upload locally with
muapi upload file <path>first, then pass the returned URL. - Fewer clips returned than requested — the source had fewer rankable highlights. Return what came back with a note.
Done Criteria
The skill is done when:
result.shortshas up tonum_clipsentries, each with a workingclip_url(orstart_time/end_timeunder--coords-only).- The user has been shown the ranked list (score, time range, title, hook, URL).
- If
--output-jsonwas set, the file exists and parses.

