Tighten - AskEditor

Give a long raw take back SHORTER. Pre-roll, false starts, restarts, take-fumbles and dead air come out; the argument, the voice and the natural rhythm stay in. NOTHING is composited, reframed, restyled, captioned or added: this register ONLY EVER REMOVES TIME, which is why it takes any orientation and hands back the source’s own frame.

See it

2:45 → 2:25 one take, tightened · 20.9s removed · 13% shorter

Output
Your input video
Side by side

Both takes in full, so the player’s own scrubber carries the result: 2:45 on your input, 2:25 on the cut. The frames are deliberately unchanged — same room, same framing, same 1920x1080 — because tighten never recomposes. Only time came out.

What came out

right, pretty much before the AI storm of LLMs. So five years ago, it’s 2026, it was probably just in 2021 or like late,uh,around ‘21, ‘22, just before,uh,the real LLMs start coming up into the mainstream of where we are right now. And ever since that, there’s been a lot of changes in all industries from, of course, software engineering to just even normal day productivity of working with Excel also. Before you would have learned how to do things,um,and understand the actual Excel macro spreadsheets even like that. That’s been updated. Now, where we are now, fast-forward five years, what we’ve been up to? Well, there’s been a lot that has been,uh,happening behind the scenes, of course.Um,and where we are rightnow—In fact, I just wanna go straight into it. Long story short,we— Uh,the thing before

■ removed — fillers, false starts, restarts and dead air. Everything else is the take’s own words, in its own order: tighten never rewrites, it only leaves things out.

Material

One recording of someone talking, UP TO 20 MINUTES. Any orientation, any resolution: the cut is a splice, so the output keeps the source’s own dimensions. The only real requirement is intelligible speech, because the cut is decided from the words.

Spec

Field	Type	Required	Description
`targetSeconds`	number	no	Leave unset to let the take decide. Setting it asks the director to REACH a length, which means dropping content and not just fumbles.
`maxSeconds`	number	no	Cap on the finished cut, default 1200 (20 min).

Pricing & timing


Delivery	File — an mp4 at `outputUrl`, plus an editable canvas
Price	200 credits: estimate is free and authoritative
Typical run	~60s
Review gate	No: runs straight through

Refusals this template can return

NO_USABLE_SPANS
SPAN_TOO_LONG
UNREADABLE

Refusals are free and typed: see Refusals.

Run it

curl (REST)
Agent (MCP)

# 1. mint an upload ticket, then put the file against it
curl -X POST https://api.askeditor.com/v1/uploads \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASKEDITOR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"purpose":"tighten"}'
# → { "ticket": "upl_…", "uploadUrl": "…" }

curl -X POST https://api.askeditor.com/v1/uploads/{ticket}/file \
  -F "file=@./recording.mp4"
# → { "material": "mat_…" }

# 2. submit the run
curl -X POST https://api.askeditor.com/api/talking-head-cut/jobs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASKEDITOR_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "material": "mat_…", "clientRequestId": "your-own-id" }'
# → { "jobId": "…", "envelopeId": "tighten:…", "credits": { "quoted": 200, "charged": 0 } }

# 3. poll until it resolves
curl https://api.askeditor.com/v1/jobs/{envelopeId} \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ASKEDITOR_API_KEY"

clientRequestId is required: reuse the same value on a retry and you cannot be charged twice for the same run.

Connected via the MCP connector? It is one sentence:

“Run the Tighten template on ~/Desktop/recording.mp4”

The agent lists the menu, estimates (free), asks your consent, uploads, runs, and polls GET /v1/jobs/{id} to the finished envelope.

Editable delivery: Delivers as PARTS: one clip per kept span, each a trim of your ORIGINAL recording. A cut you disagree with costs a drag instead of a re-run, and everything plays at master quality.

​See it

​What came out

​Material

​Spec

​Pricing & timing

​Refusals this template can return

​Run it