What is Shotstack?
Shotstack is a video editor that runs in the cloud and is driven by software. AI agents, automations and apps send an edit, and Shotstack returns the finished video.
An edit is a JSON description of a video: the clips, text, audio and effects on a timeline, and the output you want. You can write it by hand, build it in your code, or ask an AI agent to write it for you.
One edit, everywhere
The same edit moves between every part of Shotstack without conversion:
- The Edit API renders it in the cloud and returns a video, image or audio file.
- Studio opens it on a visual timeline, so a person can review and change it.
- A template saves it with merge fields such as
{{NAME}}, so you can render it again with new data.
An agent can draft a video, a person can adjust it in Studio, and your app can render a version of it for every record in your data.
Three ways in
| Way in | For | How |
|---|---|---|
| With an AI agent | Anyone using Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or similar | The MCP server for chat clients and IDEs, the CLI and skill for coding agents, or Director in Studio |
| In code and workflows | Developers and automation builders | The Edit API and SDKs from your backend, or the n8n, Make and Zapier apps |
| Inside your product | Product teams | The Studio SDK, a video editor you embed in your app |
What the engine does
- Renders edits in the cloud, in parallel, and tells you by webhook when each one is ready.
- Generates video, images, voice-overs and music from prompts while the video renders.
- Ingests your source files, transcodes them and transcribes speech with the Ingest API.
- Serves finished files from a CDN, or delivers them to your own storage.
Start here
- Make your first video with an AI agent, with no API key needed to preview.
- Make your first video with the API, using curl.
- Learn how an edit is structured.