How Non-Coders Use Descript’s API to Automate Edits (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm not a coder. I'm not a developer. I'm a marketer or a social media person. Why do I need an API for a video editing app?

[00:00:08] Speaker 2: The selling point of the API and why you, as somebody who's not a coder, would want to use it is it lets you bring Descript to wherever you are. By connecting with our Descript MCP, you get to plug Descript into your favorite LLMs and connect it to all your other tools, whether that's just those folders of stock footage you have on your desktop or you've secretly got a bunch of stuff in Dropbox or Google Drive or anywhere, really, so that it makes Descript more powerful by connecting to everything else. And then it lets you automate the boring parts of video editing. Through the API, you can tell Underlord to go do some things. And then when Underlord's done, you go back and you can do that last 10% of the stuff that you really love about video editing. Before the API, you would do all this great work in OpenCloud, Codex, or Cloud. And then you'd just be like, OK, womp, womp. Now I have to go to Descript on the web page and do everything myself. Now, no more. Now you can just plug Descript right in and walk away and be sitting pretty while your video gets made for you.

[00:01:04] Speaker 1: Yes. OK, I'm sold because I think most of us have a bunch of footage for projects that we just can't get to. And if I could get a first-pass edit and create those projects while I'm sleeping or once I drop them in a folder, that would be amazing. So how do we actually do that?

[00:01:20] Speaker 2: So I'm going to demo using Cloud because that's my preferred API tool. So one thing to note is that Descript is right now considered a custom MCP, but we're working to get in the Anthropic store. So I'm going to walk you through how to connect to the Descript MCP and then from there, how you can use it. So from your Cloud app, you're going to click Customize and then Connectors. And then from here, the plus button to add a custom connector. And I'm going to name this connector Descript. And I'm going to put our remote MCP server URL, which is api.descript.com.v2.mcp. And you can find this information in our Help Center documentation as well as all other kinds of tips and tricks on how to get started with the API. And then I'll click Add. And sometimes this happens where it says this connector has no tools available. Don't worry. All you got to do is click Refresh Tools List. And so the reason this happened to me is because I need to re-authenticate, meaning I need to tell Cloud which Descript drive to use. So I'm going to click Connect. And it'll open up a web browser window for me to sign into Descript and then take me back to Cloud. And now that that's loaded, you can see I've got all these tools available from Import Media to Underlord to Publish Project and Uploading Files. And you can, just like any other connector, you can choose what permissions you want to give Descript or not. I just let everything be always allowed because I don't mind letting Underlord take the wheel. Okay, and now we're all ready to get started making a video.

[00:03:00] Speaker 1: So what are we going to do with Cloud now that it can talk to your Descript account?

[00:03:04] Speaker 2: So now that Cloud can talk to my Descript account, Cloud can make videos in my Descript drive. It can also publish videos existing in my Descript drive or ones that I create from Cloud. And it can also get information about anything that I have in my Descript drive. So if I'm like, hey, I was working on this video that somebody shared with me. I don't remember the title, but I know it was shared to me by Aaron two weeks ago. I can just say, hey, Cloud, what video did Aaron share with me for review two weeks ago? And Cloud will tell me all that info.

[00:03:31] Speaker 1: Which was probably a video about a cheeseburger being a layer. My calendar is correct.

[00:03:37] Speaker 2: Okay, and now for today's diabolical question. So I don't know if you were tuning in on the live stream yesterday where we got to see Jill's favorite sandwich. That really got me thinking. So we'll ask Cloud, make me a Descript video about bread and wine pairings for a peanut butter, pickle, and mayo sandwich. And then we're going to say, use stock media and AI-generated images and speech and background music to make it nice. Let's try Sonnet.

[00:04:19] Speaker 1: So basically what this is doing is saying, if you were in Descript manually, you'd have to go create a new project. Give it a name. Write a script. Look through the stock media for some videos about whatever monstrosity it's going to recommend. It goes with the sandwich. Find some background music. Put it into your project. Align it. And instead we're going to say, Cloud, tell Descript's Underlord to do all this for me.

[00:04:46] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And you can see here that Cloud is already contacting Underlord. It knows what Descript is by our little Descript icon being there. And you can see what step of making the video Underlord is on. And I can even unfold this to see, okay, right now Cloud is working with Underlord on writing the script. And these are the other steps that Cloud is instructing Underlord to do to make the best video.

[00:05:09] Speaker 1: And do you agree that for a lot of people, it's probably going to be more effective to let Cloud prompt Underlord on your behalf than to go in and say, I'm going to be a prompt engineer and craft this detailed step-by-step prompt myself?

[00:05:23] Speaker 2: Yes. I totally find that to be my experience at least because, I don't know, maybe it's just something about AI, but it feels like Cloud knows how to speak Underlord's language better than I do almost. So Cloud knows how to write things for Underlord in a way that Underlord processes them better. And Cloud also has access to the internet and can do its own searches on like, okay, these are all the different features Descript has. So sometimes Cloud can tell Underlord to use features I might not be aware even exist, but that will make my video really cool.

[00:05:51] Speaker 1: Yeah. And being able to access the internet also makes me appreciate if something in your prompt required research, like which model is deciding which wine to pair it with, there's probably a search going on and Cloud's going to do that before it passes instructions to Underlord, right?

[00:06:06] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And then one of the nice things too, is that this lets me make better use of my Descript AI credits. Because if Cloud's doing like all the pre-work and the prep and the research beforehand, and that's using my Cloud tokens, then it doesn't pass things off to Underlord until Cloud has a good plan. And so that means Underlord is spending less time iterating, less time doing things, and then I have to go, oh, that wasn't very good, you know, Underlord, do it again. And so what Underlord does then is the best use of my AI credits.

[00:06:38] Speaker 1: While this is generating, what are some creative uses besides contentious debates being sparked with the Descript API, like apps people have built or ways they've automated things that have made you say, wow, as someone who's helped build this tool, that's not a use case I would have thought of.

[00:06:54] Speaker 2: You know, one thing, somebody showed me literally this morning that I thought was so cool. So as part of this telethon, we're fixing all these tickets and we're just flying through them. And with the whole engineering team, it can be kind of hard to keep up with like, where are all the demos? How do I collate them into a nice place that I can spread them out? And one of our marketing teammates, Gabe, actually showed me that he's using the Descript API to just comb through Slack for everybody's demo videos and then make sure they're published and composed in the right way so that we can share them out later and show people what we've been building during the telethon.

[00:07:26] Speaker 1: So that's back to your point about why use an API. If you have an AI tool that can talk to Slack and Slack has all of your company's internal comms, your internal comms are now Descript videos.

[00:07:37] Speaker 2: Yes.

[00:07:38] Speaker 1: Without switching tabs, copy pasting, manually typing things in.

[00:07:42] Speaker 2: Exactly.

[00:07:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a really, a really cool use case. I like the ones where people are finding ways to repurpose things because this is a user feedback point I get a lot. I have bulk media, so I'm a video podcaster. And if I had the manpower or the hours in the day, I'd clip it more. I'd repurpose it, but it's just sitting in my drive. And I see the API as a way to give life to all the scraps that you kind of, you know, didn't put out a year ago because you were busy and just wanted to ship the main thing. And you can do it in a programmatic way. Another fun one is building a library somewhere outside of Descript of all of your content.

[00:08:23] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:08:24] Speaker 1: So we do a lot of work in Notion, but it could be a Google Sheet or any connector that your Cloud or GPT account has. You could build a catalog, not just of projects, but like, what are the topics? Who was the guest? What date was it filmed? What's the link to it? And then connect that anywhere. You can embed it on a website or share that with people.

[00:08:44] Speaker 2: Yeah. And like, kind of similar in that vein, you can also, with, for example, Cloud Cowork, you could write skills to automate some of those things that you want to do. So let's say you find that this form, that there's a particular format of reels or TikToks that work really well and get a lot of engagement for your marketing ads. And you could create a Cloud skill on how to refine those TikToks or how to refine from your, let's say, 90 minute long podcast, how to tell Underlord to find the juiciest bits, how to pull from the internet, what's trending, and what are good things to put in there to make your script feel relevant and on point, rather than just like, that was last year's meme, you know?

[00:09:22] Speaker 1: Yeah. No, that's a really good one. And if we could get a link in the chat to the Descript skills repo that we made public, basically, we've had users in Discord say, I do this workflow for my podcast, but I don't want to copy and paste it or have to recreate it every time. That's the use case for a skill. And now you can just say, hey, Claude, slash podcast edit this project. Go.

[00:09:48] Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.

[00:09:50] Speaker 1: Yeah. So as we wrap up here, I'm not sure if we're going to get a visual. We can definitely check the project.

[00:09:57] Speaker 2: Yeah.

[00:09:57] Speaker 1: But if not, maybe we could just get a peek or a preview at one. Oh, and it completes right as we say that.

[00:10:03] Speaker 2: It completes right as we say that. Okay.

[00:10:07] Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody on this Friday afternoon is wondering what wine to pair with their peanut butter, pickle and mayo sandwich.

[00:10:14] Speaker 2: Oh, look, and Claude describes it with Michelin star reverence. I think Jill's going to like that.

[00:10:20] Speaker 1: I will say this about the Claude prompts that you've given it. I think it understands intent very well, and it can pick up. There's nothing in your prompt that said this is a joke or I'm trying to be funny, but it does have a good sense of humor and intent without you having to explicitly tell it.

[00:10:37] Speaker 2: And so before we sign off, if you are wanting to make a PB, pickle and mayo sandwich this weekend, it sounds like Claude recommends sourdough and with a cabernet.

[00:10:49] Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll probably abstain, but I'll keep that in mind the next time I have a peanut butter, pickle and mayo sandwich in front of me.