Brand Founder Academy

The Edit Desk Setup Guide.

How to set up video-use, the free tool that lets Claude edit your daily episode for you. Set it up once, then every day is: drop the clips in the folder, run the edit, watch it, schedule it.

The one thing to understand first: the edit is the same every day. Every episode has the same shape, so you describe the edit once, in a rules file, and Claude does it the same way every morning. You watch the result and schedule it. You never open a timeline.

Start here

How to use this

Do the one-time setup below. About 20 minutes.
Put the Countdown Edit Rules (section 3) in your countdown folder so Claude knows the format.
Run the daily routine (section 4). Close to an hour a day at first, under 45 minutes once you have it down.

What the edit has to do

Six things, every episode

Cut the best take (usually take 2) and stitch in the pickup.
Cut out the dead air, the ums and the long pauses.
Put the anchor-hook on screen in the first 2 seconds.
Lay b-roll over the part where you explain what you did. Split screen where you are showing something on a screen.
Burn in captions, big and readable with the sound off.
End on the cliffhanger and the CTA, then export vertical (9 by 16) as an MP4.

Set it up once

Your edit desk

video-use, a free Claude Code skill

video-use lets Claude Code edit video from a folder on your computer. It listens to your clip, writes down every word with the exact second you said it, then cuts, captions and adds your b-roll. No editing program, no timeline.

What you need

A Mac (or a computer with a terminal) and your Claude subscription. A free ElevenLabs account for the transcript (elevenlabs.io). About 20 minutes.

Cost

video-use is free. The ElevenLabs free plan covers a short daily video.

Step 1. Install Claude Code

Open Terminal (Cmd + Space, type Terminal, press Enter).
Paste this and press Enter: curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Close Terminal, open a new one, and type: claude --version. If it prints a version number, it worked.

Step 2. Make your countdown folder

Make a folder called countdown. Inside it, make three folders: day-01, b-roll and done.
In Terminal, go to that folder and start Claude Code. For example: cd ~/countdown && claude
The first time, log in with your Claude account and say yes when it asks to trust the folder.

Step 3. Install video-use

Paste this into Claude Code and press Enter: Set up https://github.com/browser-use/video-use for me. Read install.md first to install this repo, wire up ffmpeg, register the skill with whichever agent you're running under, and set up the ElevenLabs API key.
Say yes when it asks to approve a step. It installs everything itself in a few minutes.

Step 4. Add your ElevenLabs key, safely

Go to elevenlabs.io/app/settings/api-keys and click Create API key. Name it video-use. Leave Restrict Key on and set only Speech to Text to Access. Copy the key.
Do not paste the key into the chat. Instead, say this to Claude Code: Create the .env file video-use needs, with the ElevenLabs key line left blank, and open it in TextEdit for me.
Paste the key right after the = sign in TextEdit, save, and close it.
Then say: Check that video-use can read the key and that the ElevenLabs connection works, without printing the key.

Good to know

If the check says Speech to Text is missing, edit the key on ElevenLabs, set Speech to Text to Access, and save. The key itself does not change.

Your finished videos land in the done folder. The working files go in an edit folder inside each day.

Expect one or two rounds of "move that cutaway earlier" on the first few days. It gets faster as the rules file gets better.

Set up once, then daily

Section 3

The Countdown Edit Rules

Save everything in the box as a file called countdown-edit-rules.md in your countdown folder. Claude reads it every time you ask for an edit, so you never explain the format twice. Change the caption style in rule 8 to your own look.

01 This is a daily face-to-camera series. Every episode is one vertical video, 9 by 16, 30 to 60 seconds, MP4. 02 The clip folder for today is day-[number]. The b-roll folder is b-roll. Use only footage from these two folders. Never generate footage. 03 Pick the best full take (usually take 2). If there is a pickup take, use it to replace the flubbed line. 04 Cut all dead air, ums, and pauses over 0.7 seconds. Keep it moving but do not clip words. 05 The anchor-hook is the first thing said. Put it on screen as a caption in the first 2 seconds, in capitals. 06 Over the part where I explain what I did, cut to b-roll for 2 to 4 seconds at a time when I name something the b-roll shows (the website, the sample, the label, the box). Come back to my face between cutaways. 07 When I say I am showing something on a screen, use a split screen: my face on the bottom half, the screen recording on the top half. 08 Captions on the whole video: 2 to 3 words at a time, capitals, white with a black outline or a solid block, centered in the lower third, never over my mouth. 09 No music unless I ask. No stock footage. No effects. No logo animation. 10 The last line is the cliffhanger, then the CTA (the waitlist in my bio). Hold my face for 1 second after it, then end. No end card unless I ask. 11 Export to done/day-[number].mp4. Then tell me the length and anything you were not sure about. 12 If a take is unusable (no sound, out of focus), say so and stop. Do not guess.

Section 4

The daily routine

Close to an hour a day the first week. About 30 minutes once you have it down.

Film the episode with the 3-take method. Airdrop or plug in, and drop the takes into day-[number].
Run the edit. Start Claude Code in your countdown folder and say: "Edit day-[number] using countdown-edit-rules.md."
Watch it once. Check the captions say what you said, the b-roll matches, and the sound is clean. If something is off, say it in one sentence: "The cutaway to the label comes 2 seconds too early."
Schedule it on Instagram as a Reel for your posting time, the same time every day. In the app, tap Advanced settings, then Schedule. Caption: the anchor-hook, one plain sentence about today, then the CTA. No hashtag wall. One or two for context, or none.
Tick the row in MY EPISODES in The Countdown Sheet.

Section 5

When it goes wrong

What happened	What to do
The captions have the wrong words	Say which line. It re-reads the audio and fixes that line.
The b-roll is in the wrong place	Name the moment: "cut to the box when I say it arrived, not before."
The video is too long	"Cut it to 45 seconds. Lose the part about the shipping label."
The sound is bad	The edit cannot fix a mic that was off. Re-film. Check the mic light next time.
Claude says it cannot find the folder	Give it the full path, or drop the files into the project again.
You are 3 days behind	Post from the bank. Film 2 tomorrow. Do not skip a day of posting.

The quick checklist

Claude Code and video-use installed

The ElevenLabs key check came back working

countdown-edit-rules.md is in my countdown folder

The b-roll folder has at least 10 clips

Filmed 7 episodes before posting Day 1

Day 1 posted, same time as every day after

Not legal advice. Tools change their prices and setup steps, so check the tool's own page if a step here does not match what you see. Pete Taylor is a founder, not a video editor. This guide shows the setup he uses so you can copy it.