Creating clips from my videos with Claude Code

Hey everyone, this is Allan and today I want to show you something I built. I created a way to edit my videos into shorter cuts and then publish them on Instagram Reels, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts. It extracts parts of the videos I’ve already created so I don’t have to record anything new. One piece of content can become many pieces, one video can turn into three Instagram posts, four cuts, and maybe a newsletter. I’ll walk you through how I do it.

Cloud Code Setup

I’m using Cloud Code in VS Code. The tool tries to recognize the last video I worked on. The skill it uses isn’t something I wrote from scratch; I got it from a course and have spent the past two hours editing it to fit my workflow. After configuring the environment, I tell it to use the last video, the one I posted yesterday.

Selecting Cuts

The video is only three minutes long, so the “light” option is appropriate. It pulls captions from the video or transcribes it if captions aren’t available, then looks for segments that could become cuts. The transcription gave me two candidate cuts, each with a hook and a body. The tool suggested using the second cut as the priority, so I tried that first.

Downloading and Preparing

I let the tool download the segments from YouTube, even though I already have the files locally, just to verify the whole process. It created a folder on my computer with all the necessary files and started generating previews using FFmpeg. I chose a “black margin rounded” style for the reel because it looks better than the default.

Transcription and Segmentation

The tool transcribed the video, showing timestamps for each word. This makes it easy for AI to edit because each word is separated. It split the video into two files: a short hook to grab attention and a longer body. I even extracted the audio for the hook and listened to it.

Rendering

After creating the captions file, the tool rendered the final video and preview images. I could see the hook followed by the body in the preview. I then edited the caption, changing the call‑to‑action that asks viewers to comment.

Publishing

I ran a dry‑run publish to make sure everything worked, then told Cloud to publish the reel on Instagram with the caption and MP4 file. The upload completed successfully. I opened the reel and saw that it only shows to people who don’t follow me, which resulted in very little interaction. That made me reconsider how often I post on Instagram, since the algorithm limits reach to non‑followers.

Next Steps

Now I can create cuts from any of my videos for Instagram or YouTube Shorts. The process still takes a bit of time, but once I fine‑tune the workflow it will be fully automated. Then I can start the reel creation, let the system handle publishing, and move on to other work or study. That’s it for today, see you in the next video.