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How Formats Studio works

The mental model: your agent and you on one timeline, local files and linked media, sequences, and frames.

Your agent edits the same timeline you do

Your agent runs on your Mac through the app. It reads the project, the transcript and the frames it needs, then calls the editor's own tools: cut, trim, caption, add graphics, grade, export.
Nothing it does is hidden. Each tool call appears in the chat as a row, and changes to the timeline arrive as edits you can review, apply, decline or undo.
You and your agent share one undo history, so ⌘Z steps back through both.
Skills teach the agent how a kind of video is made. Formats ships twelve, and your agent can also follow your own. See Skills.

Everything the app writes lives in a workspace folder on your Mac, by default Movies › Formats Studio.
Your source video and audio are linked, not copied or uploaded: a project points to the files where they already are.
Projects, caches, generated media and exports are plain files in the workspace, so you can back it up or move it like any folder.

A project holds a timeline, its settings (resolution and frame rate) and references to the media you use.
The timeline stacks tracks; higher tracks draw over lower ones.
A clip is a window into a source file. Trimming a clip changes which part of the source plays; it never alters the file.
An adjustment layer is a clip without media of its own that applies its effects and color to every clip below it.

A sequence is a standalone timeline in the same project, opened as a tab above the timeline. Each has its own tracks, clips and markers; the Main timeline is itself one.
A compound clip folds a stretch of the timeline into a single reusable item that you can move, trim and add effects to like one clip.
They are the same thing seen two ways: open a compound clip to edit it as a sequence, and drop any sequence into another timeline as a clip.

Timing is measured in frames at the project frame rate.
The preview and timeline show timecode as minutes, seconds and frames.
Source media can have a different frame rate than the project; Formats converts between them as you edit.

Playback, effects, color and export use your Mac's GPU and its hardware video encoders.
Proxies are lighter copies of heavy media that keep editing smooth; exports always use the originals.
Exports never carry a watermark, on any plan.