"An editor, a editor, my kingdom for an editor!"
Almost every creator I know is looking for an editor. Not just any editor. That one elusive hire that is a one-in-a-million find: an editor who gets their *taste*.
Not just someone who trims clips, but someone who instinctively understands timing, pacing, and vibe–as if they’re inside your head.
That kind of creative alignment has always been rare and expensive. I’ve talked to hundreds of creators–this is the bottleneck everyone hits. What if you could have an AI-powered virtual editor instead that makes decisions just like you would, producing a video edit perfectly on brand?
This is the promise of vibe editing–AI tools that can watch how you edit your content, then start doing it for you. It’s not a pipe dream. We're closer than you might think.
🚀 What’s changing?
- Agents > Buttons. Instead of scrubbing timelines and clicking menus, you just describe the outcome: “Cut filler, keep it under 6 minutes, zoom on emotional beats.” You stay the director.
- Your data becomes your DNA. The more the agent sees your work, the more it edits like you. That fingerprint might become your moat.
- Precision vs magic is the new UX frontier. Agentic editing feels miraculous — until you want fine-grained control. Balancing intuitive guidance with detailed intervention is the next design challenge.
🛠 Startups to watch
- Ponder – calls itself the “cursor for video,” rapidly generates rough cuts, adapts to user editing styles, and offers multi-platform optimization
- Mosaic – YC W25 winner; a node-based canvas where you chain your own multimodal agents and drop to chat or timeline for polish. (think Zapier meets Premiere).
- Clova – the footage librarian: tags faces, dialogue, A-roll/B-roll, then hands you prompt-based rough cuts.
- Descript Agent – bakes an AI co-editor into a tool millions already use; removes filler, fixes audio, drafts timelines on request.
Automating edits is huge, but even for interesting is that if this works, it means we effectively found a way to encode taste 🤯 (as long as creators don't skip developing their taste in the first place) Any startups I missed? What one editing task would you hand off to an AI agent tomorrow? And what would you create with the time you get back?