Install Cut Valet, make your first project, and let it take over ingest, backup and cataloguing. Then a short tour of the five pages and how a shoot moves through them.
| Operating system | macOS 13 (Ventura) or later on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer), or Windows 10/11 (64-bit). Intel Macs are not supported. |
| DaVinci Resolve | Resolve Studio 21+ for the editing tools (the free version lacks the scripting API). Not required just to ingest, back up, and organize. |
| Disk space | ~1.5 GB for the app itself. The local AI models are a separate one-time download of roughly 10 to 20 GB, depending on which analysis engines you use. You can point that at any folder or an external drive under Settings, Folders, AI Model Storage. |
| A brain (optional) | Cut Valet runs local models out of the box. If you want a cloud brain for the assistant and planning, bring your own key for Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter or Perplexity, or point it at Ollama and stay entirely local. |
| YouTube | Optional. Connect your own channel if you want to publish from the Deliver step. |
Download the app for your platform and open it. The setup wizard asks one question per step: your licence, where footage should live, one brain question, and which analysis engines you want. There is a receipt at the end so a wrong answer is easy to catch, and "Just drive" is a real choice if you would rather it stayed out of the way.
The app opens on the Library. Hit New Project and it is drawn right there: your Resolve binding, the two sync switches, and how much the assistant does on its own, all decided at the start. Projects file into workspaces, and older ones tuck away by year.
Watch: Workspaces, Projects & Adopting an Existing Resolve Project (10:04)
Once the project exists, Cut Valet asks once for your call sheet, script, shot list and notes. This is worth doing: everything you file here reaches the assistant and the clip descriptions, so it knows what the shoot is before you ask it anything.
Plug in a card or drop a folder. Ingest opens as one window with a five-stop dial: Auto, Copy only, Words, Words + vision, or Every signal. Auto looks at each clip and decides per clip. The same dial serves cards, drops, watch folders and the archive, so there is one place to answer this rather than five.
Watch: The Edit Page, Ingest, Multicam & AI Analysis (21:38)
The Media well fills as the copy runs, and the Queue tray on the right shows each lane with what is left to do. Switch that tray to Assistant and you can just ask: pull selects from the first half of the shoot. When you are ready, Deliver lists what each cut still needs.
Cut Valet is five pages on one bar: Library, Edit, Deliver, Archive and Settings. Tools open in the working pane rather than as floating windows, and almost nothing blocks the app while you use it.
The front door. Every project is a card that says where the work is up to. Workspaces group them, you can drag a card onto a workspace to file it, and the app always opens here.
Ingest, media and tools in one place. The Ingest and Tools shelf sits over the drop zone; the Media grid fills as footage copies, with a filter and a right-click menu on every clip. Tools open in the working pane, and the Timelines strip along the bottom holds every cut the app has built.
Cuts are documents first. Each one is a real .otio file in your project, so you can plan and rebuild a timeline with Resolve closed, then send the whole thing over in one batch.
Queue, Assistant and Activity. The Queue tab draws the real scheduler: lanes for the graphics card, lanes for the processor, and what is left on each. Drop clips on a lane to queue just that job. The Assistant tab is a full conversation with the project in hand, and Activity is the receipt of everything the app or an assistant has done.
Everything you have ever shot. One query across every drive, with grid, moments and constellation views, a People facet, backup coverage by shoot day, and where each clip physically lives. It opens without a project.
A to-do list, not a checklist rail. The page lists what each cut still needs, the copy, the thumbnail, the destinations, and runs the steps in order with a receipt. Export presets are yours to edit, and each preset's folder is watched so a render lands back in the app on its own.
Cut Valet uses color for state, so you can read progress at a glance: in the queue rows, the completion ring, and every progress bar: