What a production harness does
A video production harness is the structure around AI agents that makes their work safe to use: what they may change, how their output is checked, and where a person decides.
Agents are good at proposing: which lines carry the story, where a graphic helps, what a title should promise. Left alone, they can also invent a quote, drift from your script or publish too early. In CoProd, agents return data, never code: a versioned production plan that schema and semantic checks validate before anything renders. Trusted renderers build it, the Producer reviews the evidence, and the decisions that change what you say or publish stay with you.
- AI agents propose
- The Story Editor, the Director and the packaging writer return structured plans, using the AI providers and keys you configure.
- Code verifies
- Validation rejects invalid timing, references and parameters. FFmpeg and Remotion build the cut, and the Producer approves only the gates its checks can verify.
- You decide
- Your script and every upload, and the story when you check it. Changing any of them after approval means approving it again.
How a harness differs from other video tools
| Prompt-to-video tool | Timeline editor | CoProd | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starts from | A prompt or script | Your footage | Your footage or approved script |
| Who speaks | Often an AI voice or avatar | You | You; every spoken line is from your takes |
| Who edits | The generator | You, by hand | AI agents propose, code builds and checks |
| Your decisions | Regenerate until it fits | Every cut | The script and every upload; the story if you check it |
| Where media lives | Usually the vendor’s cloud | Your computer | Your Mac; chosen AI tasks use your keys |
Start from footage, not a script
Premium’s footage-first mode starts where many videos really start: a folder of unscripted takes. CoProd drafts a story from what you said, and on a hands-off production the Producer checks it and carries on.
Drop in your footage
Choose New Project, then Start from footage, or drop videos onto the production library. Bring talking-head takes, narrated screen recordings and optional B-roll together; CoProd sorts talking footage from B-roll, and you can change a clip’s role from its menu. A title is optional, and Let the footage decide is the default length; you can set a target in minutes instead.
Transcribe with word timings
Local Whisper transcribes every take on your Mac by default. Footage mode needs complete word timings and handles up to 60,000 transcript words per project.
Get a story drafted from your own words
Using the writing model you configure, the Story Editor selects lines from your transcript, drops retakes, filler and false starts, and groups what remains into chapters. Each line names its take and exact source range.
Let the Producer check the story, or check it yourself
Hands-off is the default: the Producer reviews the story and continues when its review passes. Tick Check the story before editing to review it yourself: play any line, drag lines and chapters into a new order, remove or restore material, or redraft with a direction such as “Lead with the demo.” Every edit saves a new story version that needs your approval. With the offline writer, the story always waits for you.
Let the Producer finish
Once the story is approved, by the Producer or by you, the Producer plans, reviews, builds, renders and packages the video, then stops at your upload approval. The Director places suitable B-roll over the narration it illustrates. If the Producer stops, the production shows why, with a Retry button or the review it needs from you.
Have a script after all? Add it in the same sheet, by pasting it or choosing a text or Markdown file. Approve script and start records your approval of exactly that text, and there is no separate story check: your script is the story. Importing a pickup recording later, or approving an amended script, replans an autonomous production by itself.
Prefer to drive? Choose Supervised and run each step yourself with the same story tools.
Your B-roll, placed where it belongs
Drop your cutaways in with your talking takes. Premium sorts the clips, describes what each shot shows, and uses your footage before reaching for generated images.
- Sorting you can change. Clips with no sound or very little speech become B-roll; a screen recording you narrate stays talking footage. Each clip says why, and its menu lets you change the role.
- Shots matched to your narration. The Director’s vision model describes each shot. Suitable shots become full-frame cutaways or screen-recording insets beside you. Validation rejects placements outside a shot or without a matching narration quote; visual QA checks full-frame cutaways against their descriptions.
- A continuous picture over a jump cut. Where a described shot fits the words on both sides, the Director can carry it across the cut between two presenter scenes.
- Natural sound under your voice. Eligible full-frame cutaways keep their own sound, dipping under speech and rising in pauses. Screen-recording insets and clips with detected speech stay silent. Use Natural sound from B-roll in Edit to switch it off; new productions start with it on.
- Add footage after the cut. Autonomous productions try to place new B-roll while keeping the story, settled graphics, music, thumbnails and title choice. Supervised projects offer Place B-roll for your review. Publish reports what was used and why other clips were left out. A refresh never replaces a finished master you delivered from your editor.
Shot descriptions send still frames to your configured vision provider, billed separately with your own key. The offline Director cannot describe footage or cover jump cuts; it can only match already described shots by shared words.
The autonomous Producer
The Producer’s checks are deterministic code, not a language model, and cost nothing to run. On an autonomous project it carries the machine gates, and stops as soon as its checks find something a person should see.
Approves on its own
- The story of a hands-off footage production, once its story review passes.
- The storyboard, once its coverage and length checks pass.
- The visual-direction pass, applied once per script version.
- The rough cut, when its quality check is clean and, in Premium, once its screening is done.
- The final render and the publishing package.
Stops and asks you
- A cut outside 0.4 to 1.6 times its target length, or a scene the quality check flags, after up to two mechanical repairs per step.
- Any failed step, with a triaged list of findings.
- Your script and every upload, always; the story if you tickCheck the story before editing.
Repairs are mechanical: re-pacing a cut that runs long or short, or switching off a flagged scene’s graphic while keeping its footage, audio and timing. Nothing rolls back. Each review and finding is saved with the project, auto-approvals are labeled as the Producer’s, and Run Producer continues from where a run stopped.
The Producer screens the rough cut
In Premium, before it approves a rough cut, the Producer asks the Director’s vision model to watch it: contact sheets of every scene go to the model with the outline and narration. It can redesign a graphic, add a missing visual or simplify a busy scene. Each change goes back through the usual checks, one at a time, and screening never touches your speech, timing, music, levels or B-roll. It runs at most two rounds of four changes per cut, and Publish lists what it changed. Screening is billed to your own key; the offline Director skips it. On a supervised project, wts review screen asks for notes only.
The production list, Overview and bottom status bar show why a run stopped and what comes next. Retry resumes a failed step; Producer: Needs you points to your review. If the story or script has changed, the old storyboard is marked out of date and offers Regenerate Storyboard or the step that must happen first.
Guardrails in every run
- Your words only. In footage mode, the Story Editor selects lines and word ranges from your transcript; it cannot write speech or timings, and invalid selections are rejected. Captions are computed from the transcript, not written by a model.
- Plans, not code. Validation rejects gaps, overlaps, invalid references and unsupported parameters before anything renders. Invalid output is never executed.
- Approvals bound to versions. An approval covers one exact story, plan or package. Edit it and it needs approving again; earlier versions stay in the project’s history.
- A cost ledger. Every billed AI call is recorded with its provider, model and usage, then priced. A model without a known rate shows as unpriced instead of disappearing from the total.
- Your Mac is the studio. The project library and recordings stay on your Mac, where local transcription and rendering run. Cloud AI tasks send the text, audio or images they need to the providers you choose.
- A way out. Premium exports editable Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve projects linked to your original camera files, and uploads to YouTube only as private videos.
Take the cut into your editor
Choose Open in editor to continue in Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. Premium exports a 1080p, 30 fps timeline linked to your original camera files, with footage, graphics, captions, narration, music, sound effects and B-roll natural sound on separate clips or tracks. Music and natural-sound dips arrive as editable volume keyframes. Graphics and captions are rendered clips, rather than native editable titles.
Version 2026.54.1 fixes Sony camera timecode handling and keeps Final Cut Pro edits on timeline frames, so connected graphics, captions and narration stay aligned. Music ducking now survives the import too. After rough-cut approval, bring back a finished render of the same length at 1080p and 30 fps; CoProd verifies it before packaging and publication. See the editor handoff workflow.
What it made from one real project
In one of the creator’s own productions, 8 recordings totalling 35:03 became a 13:41 cut, and its 34-second opening draws on 3 different recordings. These are one project’s numbers, not a speed benchmark. Watch the raw take and the edit.
Check your Mac with your AI agent
Paste this prompt into an AI agent that can run Terminal commands. It checks the requirements below with one read-only script, reports what passes, and opens CoProd Premium’s checkout only if nothing blocks.
| Check | Needs | Level |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | 14 Sonoma or later | Required |
| Processor | Apple Silicon; the Premium installer is built for it | Required |
| FFmpeg and ffprobe | With libx264 and libmp3lame, or Homebrew so the app’s Production setup can install them | Required |
| Local Whisper | whisper-cli and its speech model, about 3 GB; Production setup installs both with Homebrew, and cloud transcription with your own key also works | Recommended |
| Free disk space | 10 GB or more for the speech model, footage proxies and renders | Recommended |
| Memory | 32 GB or more, only for local MOSS sound-effect generation | Optional |
| Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve | Either one, to finish Premium’s editable project exports | Optional |
Not needed: Node.js, Bun, Swift, Xcode or Python. Premium bundles its own runtime. Activation and periodic license checks need internet access.
Copy the prompt
Use Copy prompt below, or select the text yourself.
Paste it into your agent
Use an agent that can run Terminal commands on your Mac, such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor or Gemini CLI.
Read the report
The agent runs one read-only script and marks each requirement as a pass, a note or a blocker, with the fix for anything that blocks.
Buy when every required check passes
The agent then opens coprod.app/buy/, which forwards to CoProd Premium’s secure checkout. With a blocker, it opens nothing.
Check whether this Mac is ready for CoProd Premium, then open its checkout if it is.
About CoProd Premium: a native macOS app that turns my own camera recordings into a finished YouTube video, with AI agents and an autonomous Producer working inside approval gates. It ships as a signed installer for Apple Silicon Macs and bundles its own runtime, so Node.js, Bun, Swift, Xcode and Python are not needed. Published requirements: https://coprod.app/agentic-video-production/#agent-check
Rules:
- Run only the read-only script below, in sh, bash or zsh. It reads system information and changes nothing.
- Do not install, update or delete anything, and do not use sudo, unless I ask you to afterwards.
- If you cannot run commands, show me the script to paste into Terminal, wait for my output, then apply the same rules and give me the link instead of opening it.
```sh
PATH="$PATH:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/local/bin"
echo "macos=$(sw_vers -productVersion)"
echo "apple_silicon=$(sysctl -n hw.optional.arm64 2>/dev/null || echo 0)"
echo "memory_gb=$(( $(sysctl -n hw.memsize) / 1073741824 ))"
echo "free_disk_gb=$(df -g "$HOME" | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}')"
for tool in ffmpeg ffprobe whisper-cli brew; do
echo "$tool=$(command -v "$tool" || echo missing)"
done
if command -v ffmpeg >/dev/null; then
echo "ffmpeg_encoders=$(ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders 2>/dev/null | grep -oE 'libx264|libmp3lame' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' ')"
fi
if [ -s "$HOME/.whisper-models/ggml-large-v3.bin" ]; then
echo "whisper_model=present"
else
echo "whisper_model=missing"
fi
for app in "/Applications/CoProd Premium.app" "/Applications/Final Cut Pro.app" "/Applications/DaVinci Resolve/DaVinci Resolve.app"; do
if [ -d "$app" ]; then echo "installed=$app"; fi
done
```
Report each check below as ✅ pass, ⚠️ note or ❌ blocker, one line each.
Required; any failure is a blocker:
1. macOS 14 or later (major version of macos is 14 or higher).
2. Apple Silicon (apple_silicon=1). The Premium installer is for Apple Silicon only.
3. Media tools: ffmpeg and ffprobe are found and ffmpeg_encoders lists both libx264 and libmp3lame. Homebrew (brew) being found also passes, because CoProd's Settings → General → Production setup installs FFmpeg with it.
Notes; never blockers:
- whisper-cli or whisper_model missing: Production setup installs local Whisper with Homebrew and downloads the speech model (about 3 GB). Cloud transcription with my own API key also works.
- free_disk_gb under 10: warn that the speech model, footage proxies and renders need room.
- memory_gb of 32 or more: eligible for Premium's optional local MOSS sound-effect generation. Below 32, everything else works.
- Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve installed: Premium can open its editable project exports there. Neither is required.
- CoProd Premium already installed: tell me, and ask before opening the checkout.
If there are no blockers, run: open "https://coprod.app/buy/"
It opens CoProd Premium's checkout in my default browser. Tell me you opened it.
If there is a blocker, do not open the checkout. Explain each blocker and its fix: update to macOS 14 or later; without Apple Silicon, point me to the free edition's source-build guide at https://coprod.app/get-started/; for media tools, install Homebrew from https://brew.sh or an FFmpeg build with libx264 and libmp3lame, then run this check again.Your agent may ask permission before it runs the script or opens your browser. The prompt names https://coprod.app/buy/, a stable link that forwards to the current checkout, so a copied prompt keeps working.
Free or Premium
Both editions run autonomous projects with the Producer, starting from an approved script. Premium adds footage-first stories, B-roll sorting, shot descriptions, placement and natural sound, editable Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve exports, private-only uploads, narrated rehearsals, the sound library and channel insights, as a signed installer for Apple Silicon Macs.
The free edition is source-available under Elastic License 2.0: you build it from source with the setup guide, and its renders carry a watermark. Premium is a one-time purchase (US$50 for the first 50 buyers, then US$149 for one Mac, US$199 for 3 Macs and US$249 for 5), includes two years of updates and covers one creator on 1, 3 or 5 Macs. Compare the editions.
Questions about agentic production in CoProd
What is a video production harness?
A harness is the structure around AI agents that makes their work safe to use: what they may change, how their output is checked, and where a person decides. In CoProd, agents propose the story, the edit and the publishing package as structured plans. Code validates and builds those plans, the Producer reviews the results, and you approve the script and every upload, and the story too when you choose to check it.
What does CoProd’s autonomous Producer do?
On an autonomous project, the Producer carries the machine gates for you. It transcribes new footage, reviews the storyboard’s coverage and length, builds the rough cut, requires a clean quality check, has the Director screen the cut in Premium, renders, and generates the publishing package, then stops at your upload approval. Before escalating, it can make up to two mechanical repairs per step, such as re-pacing a cut that runs long. Every review and finding is saved with the project, and its approvals are labeled as the Producer’s.
Is the Producer an AI model, and what does it cost?
No. The Producer’s checks and decisions are deterministic code in the app, with no usage cost. The AI agents in a production, such as the Director and the Story Editor, use the providers you configure with your own API keys, billed separately by those providers. That includes Premium’s rough-cut screening, where the Producer asks the Director’s vision model to look at every scene before it approves the cut; the offline Director skips it. The app records every billed call with its provider, model and usage.
Can CoProd make a video from footage without a script?
Yes, in Premium. Choose New Project, then Start from footage, and drop in unscripted talking-head recordings. CoProd transcribes them with word timings and drafts a story from what you said. Hands-off is the default: the Producer checks that story and the production continues to the publication gate. Tick Check the story before editing to approve the story yourself first. You can also add a script at the start; your approved script then serves as the story.
Can I mix talking-head takes, screen recordings and B-roll?
Yes, in Premium. A screen recording you narrate is talking footage; clips without sound or with very little speech become B-roll, and you can change either role. The Director’s vision model describes B-roll shot by shot, then proposes cutaways where the narration matches, preferring your footage to generated images. Suitable shots can cover jump cuts. Natural sound from B-roll is on by default for eligible full-frame cutaways and can be switched off in Edit. Describing shots sends still frames to your configured vision provider, billed separately with your own key.
What if I add B-roll after the video is edited?
An autonomous production tries to place the new B-roll without rewriting the story or replacing settled graphics, music and sound effects. It rebuilds the cut when placements change, keeping the packaging, thumbnails and title choice, then returns to your upload approval. In a supervised production, Place B-roll proposes the additions for review. Publish reports which clips were used and why others were left out. A refresh never replaces a finished master you delivered from your editor.
Can I finish the cut in Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve?
Yes, in Premium. Open in editor exports a 1080p, 30 fps timeline linked to your original camera files, with separate footage, graphics, captions, narration, music, sound effects and B-roll natural sound. Music and natural-sound dips arrive as editable volume keyframes; graphics and captions arrive as rendered clips, not native editable titles. Version 2026.54.1 fixes Sony camera timecode handling, timeline-frame alignment and music ducking in Final Cut Pro. After rough-cut approval, you can bring back a finished render of the same length at 1080p and 30 fps; CoProd verifies it before packaging and publication.
What happens when the Producer stops?
The production list, Overview and the bottom status bar show why the run stopped and what to do next. Retry resumes a failed step; Producer: Needs you points to a review that needs your decision. A storyboard made for an older story or script is marked out of date and offers Regenerate Storyboard, or the prerequisite step, rather than letting you approve the stale version. Reviews and findings stay with the project.
Will the AI put words in my mouth?
No. In footage mode, the Story Editor can only select lines and word ranges from your transcript; it cannot write spoken lines or timings, and invalid selections are rejected. Every spoken line in the cut comes from your recordings, and captions are computed from the transcript rather than written by a model.
Can CoProd publish to YouTube without me?
No. Script approval and upload approval are never automated, in supervised or autonomous projects. You approve the package and the exact thumbnail before uploading, and changing either requires a new approval. Premium also enforces private-only uploads, so you make each video public yourself in YouTube Studio.
Which AI agents can run the Mac check?
Any agent that can run Terminal commands on your Mac, such as Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor or Gemini CLI. A chat assistant without terminal access gives you the script to paste into Terminal, reads the output you paste back, and gives you the checkout link instead of opening it.
What does the check prompt install or change?
Nothing. It runs one read-only script that reads your macOS version, processor, memory, free disk space and media tools, and it tells the agent not to install anything or use sudo. Only when every required check passes does the agent open coprod.app/buy/, which forwards to CoProd Premium’s secure Lemon Squeezy checkout.
What do I need to run CoProd Premium?
macOS 14 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac, plus FFmpeg with libx264 and libmp3lame, or Homebrew, which the app’s Production setup uses to install FFmpeg and local Whisper. The app bundles its own runtime, so you don’t need Node.js, Bun or Xcode. Activation and periodic license checks need internet access. DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro and 32 GB of memory for local sound generation are optional.
Is the Producer in the free edition?
Yes. Both editions run autonomous projects with the Producer, starting from an approved script. Starting from footage, editable Final Cut Pro and DaVinci Resolve exports, and private-only uploads are Premium features. The free edition is a source build under Elastic License 2.0, and its renders carry a watermark.
How much does CoProd Premium cost?
Premium is a one-time purchase, not a subscription: US$149 for one Mac, US$199 for 3 Macs and US$249 for 5. For the first 50 buyers, the 1-Mac checkout applies a discount that brings it to US$50. It includes two years of updates for one creator on 1, 3 or 5 Macs, and you keep using your last eligible version afterwards. Paid AI provider usage is billed separately with your own keys.
Keep reading
Product details checked against CoProd Premium 2026.62.0 on .