Birch — Development skill for Claude Code

Birch

Birch cuts your talking videos into reels ([birch.video](https://birch.video)). Drop in a clip and he takes out the pauses and retakes, works out who's talking, puts their name on screen, throws the words they lean on up in big type and lays music underneath. You get an mp4.

It runs on your Mac. Transcription is whisper.cpp, faces come from Apple's Vision framework and rendering is ffmpeg. The part that plans the edit goes through Claude Code, so it uses the Claude plan you already have. No API keys, no uploads.

Install

curl -fsSL https://birch.video/install | sh

That puts Birch in `~/.birch`, gives you a `birch` command and opens the setup page in your browser. The page installs ffmpeg and whisper, downloads the speech model and builds the face tools, each with a button. It also asks you to star this repo and follow [@veds260](https://github.com/veds260) before it unlocks.

After that:

birch                  # opens Birch
birch cut talk.mov     # starts a clip and opens it
birch doctor           # what's set up and what isn't
birch update           # pulls the latest version

You need macOS with [Homebrew](https://brew.sh). For names and the auto plan you also need [Claude Code](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/setup). Without it Birch still cuts, captions and adds music.

MCP

Birch ships an MCP server. The setup page has a button for this, or run:

claude mcp add --scope user birch -- birch mcp

Then tell Claude something like "cut ~/Movies/talk.mov into a vertical reel" and it calls `birch_cut`, which runs the whole edit and hands back the file path. There's also `birch_setup`, `birch_status`, `birch_open` and `birch_projects` for checking on things.

Features

• Cuts on the audio, not the transcript. Whisper's word times slip by about a word after every pause, so cutting on them removes the wrong syllable.