Cut Silences (Pipeline Agent 1)

First step of the automated edit. Takes a raw recording + its word-level transcript and removes only silence: dead air before the first word and after the last word, plus inter-word pauses longer than a threshold (trimmed down to a natural breath, never a hard zero-gap). It leaves the speaker's words untouched — false starts, retakes, and stutters are the cut-mistakes agent's job (Agent 2).

This agent is deterministic and transcript-driven, so its output (*.silence-transcript.json) feeds cleanly into the next agents and the beat-sync validator.

When to use

• "cut the silences", "trim the pauses", "remove dead air", "tighten the pacing"
• As the first stage of the master edit workflow, right after transcription.

Prerequisites

A word-level transcript JSON. Either the ElevenLabs Scribe shape ({ words: [{ text, start, end, type }], audio_duration_secs }) or a generic { words: [{ text, start, end }] }. Generate one with the workspace transcriber:

node scripts/transcribe-elevenlabs.mjs path/to/raw.mp4    # -> path/to/raw.json

Usage

# 1) Plan only — compute the cut, write EDL + re-timed transcript (no video touched)
node .claude/skills/cut-silences/scripts/cut-silences.mjs <transcript.json> \
  --out-dir video-projects/<slug>/assets

# 2) With a video — also write the ffmpeg command (still does not render yet)
node .claude/skills/cut-silences/scripts/cut-silences.mjs <transcript.json> \
  --video video-projects/<slug>/assets/raw.mp4 --out-dir video-projects/<slug>/assets

# 3) Render the cut video (local ffmpeg, re-encode, A/V kept in sync)
#    add --apply to actually run ffmpeg
node .claude/skills/cut-silences/scripts/cut-silences.mjs <transcript.json> \
  --video video-projects/<slug>/assets/raw.mp4 --apply \
  --output video-projects/<slug>/assets/edited-silenced.mp4

Options

Flag	Default	Meaning
--video <path>	—	Source video; enables the ffmpeg command / render
--out-dir <dir>	next to transcript	Where outputs are written
--output <path>	<video-stem>.silenced.mp4	Cut-video path
--gap <s>	0.55	Minimum pause treated as trimmable silence
--head-pad <s>	0.22	Silence kept before the first word
--tail-pad <s>	0.34	Silence kept after the last word
--apply	off	Actually run ffmpeg to render the cut

How it decides (the silence rules)

• Pauses below --gap (0.55s) are left alone — natural speech rhythm.
• For a trimmed pause, a natural breath is kept, scaled by context: 0.24s for long pauses (≥2s), 0.20s after a sentence ender (. ! ?), 0.14s otherwise. The kept breath is biased slightly toward the end of the previous phrase.
• Head/tail dead air is trimmed to --head-pad / --tail-pad.
• Delete ranges are merged; keep ranges are the complement. The cut is rendered with an ffmpeg trim/atrim + concat filtergraph (written to a *.silence-filter.txt script and passed via -/filter_complex), so video and audio stay in sync.

Outputs (written to --out-dir)

File	Purpose
<stem>.silence-edl.json	Keep/delete ranges, durations, params — the edit list
<stem>.silence-transcript.json	Words re-timed onto the edited timeline (feeds Agent 2 + beats)
<stem>.silence-decisions.md	Human-readable summary + largest pauses trimmed
<stem>.silence-filter.txt	The ffmpeg filtergraph (only with --video)
<video-stem>.silenced.mp4	The cut video (only with --apply)

The JSON summary printed to stdout includes removed, removedPct, range counts, and output paths — useful for the master workflow to log and chain.

Tuning notes

• Talking-head YouTube default (--gap 0.55) removes roughly 15-20% of a typical raw take as pure silence. Lower --gap for a punchier, faster cut; raise it to preserve more natural breathing room.
• If a cut feels too aggressive at sentence boundaries, raise the sentence-break breath, or raise --gap.

Hand-off to the next agent

Pass <stem>.silence-transcript.json (and the silenced.mp4 if rendered) to the cut-mistakes agent. Because timestamps are already on the edited timeline, downstream beat timing and scripts/validate-beat-sync.mjs work without further adjustment.