Your first edit

Import footage, hand the AI agent one prompt, watch it plan, cut, and check its own work, then export. First finished video in under 10 minutes.

Your first edit in Pluged AI is one prompt long. You import footage, tell the agent the outcome you want, and it plans the cut, makes the edits on your real timeline, and checks its own work before it says it's done. This tutorial takes any talking-head or event footage to an exported, captioned clip in under 10 minutes.

What you'll make

A short, captioned highlight clip cut from your raw footage — planned, edited, and quality-checked by the agent, exported as an MP4.

Step 1: Create a project

Go to app.pluged.ai
Click New project
Pick Vertical 1080p if this is headed for TikTok/Reels/Shorts, or keep Landscape 1080p

Don't overthink the canvas — the agent can reframe later, and it reads your current canvas as a signal for what you're making.

Step 2: Drop in your footage

Drag a video file from your computer anywhere into the editor. It lands in the Media panel; thumbnails and the audio waveform appear after a moment. You can drag the clip onto the timeline yourself, or skip that — the agent works with imported footage either way.

Step 3: Give the agent one prompt

Open the Agent panel and describe the outcome — not the steps:

"Edit this into a 45-second highlight of the best moments, with captions and a music bed. Make it feel tight."

That's the whole instruction. Don't list tools or break it into sub-tasks — the agent is built to take the entire job.

Step 4: Watch it work

Here's what you'll see, in order:

A one-line plan. The agent states its thesis — the one idea your video argues — and a target length. It only asks a question first if the answer would genuinely change the edit (at most two, ever). Otherwise it states its defaults and starts.
A storyboard card appears above the chat: the thesis, target duration, and 3–6 beats (hook, context, payoff), each tied to a moment in your footage. This is the plan it's editing against, and it updates as beats complete. More in Storyboard.
Tool rows stream into the chat as the agent works — analyzing the footage, cutting segments, adding captions timed to speech, placing music. Every row is a real change on your timeline, applied immediately.
The self-check. Before finishing, the agent critiques its own cut, verifies the targets (duration, captions, canvas), and renders the edit so an AI can watch it through and flag problems. It fixes what the checks find before telling you it's done. Details in How the agent checks its work.

Step 5: Review — you're still in charge

Play the result in the preview. Three ways to react:

Ask for changes conversationally. "Tighten the middle", "different caption style", "the hook should be the line about the deadline."
Undo. Every agent change is a normal undo step — press Cmd/Ctrl+Z to step back through anything it did, as far as you like.
Take over manually. Trim clips on the timeline, retype a caption, nudge an overlay. The agent's edits are ordinary timeline elements; nothing is locked. See the manual editor overview.