BeatDesign — A Local-First AI Image & Video Workspace

What it is

BeatDesign is an open-source, local-first workspace for creating AI images and videos. It's designed as a self-hosted alternative to cloud tools like Higgsfield — you run it on your own machine, and your projects, media, and timelines stay there.

Two creative modes, one project

• Infinite Canvas — a visual workspace where you drop in prompts, images, video, and audio, then connect nodes, branch ideas, compare generations, and reuse outputs.
• Video Editor — a browser-native timeline where you trim, split, mix audio, place image overlays, style captions, create alternate AI "Takes," preview, and export MP4.

Both modes share the same Project — anything you generate becomes a reusable Asset available across Canvas, Editor, and MCP agents.

How it works

• Local by default. Projects, media, canvas state, timelines, and generation history stay in your local workspace.
• Bring your own Agent. Coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and others can inspect and edit the same project you see in the browser via MCP (Model Context Protocol) — a standard way for AI tools to interact with external systems.
• Bring your own generation access. BeatAPI is the built-in provider for generating/analyzing media, but local operations (importing, arranging, editing, previewing, exporting) don't require an API key. Selecting a local file doesn't upload it anywhere.

What works today

• Image and video generation, plus Standard and Deep video analysis
• Canvas nodes for images, video, audio, generation, timeline, and text
• Non-destructive timeline editing with image/video/audio tracks, movable overlays, and styled SRT captions
• Local preview and browser-side MP4 export (H.264/AAC) using WebCodecs and Mediabunny — no system FFmpeg needed for export
• English, Chinese, and Japanese interfaces
• Local MCP servers (stdio and Streamable HTTP)

Current status

• Latest release: v0.2.5 (October 2026), with 30 MCP tools
• Unreleased source: adds persistent Canvas groups, Asset folders, reusable workflow templates, and 38 MCP tools
• Not included yet: hosted collaboration, multiple named timelines, advanced transitions, speed controls, waveforms, and desktop packaging

Quick start

Requirements: Node.js 22+, pnpm 10+, and a current Chrome browser on macOS or Windows.

pnpm install
pnpm db:push
pnpm dev

Then open http://127.0.0.1:3020. Add a BeatAPI API key only when you want to generate or analyze media.

Supported agent platforms

The README lists 16 supported coding agents/platforms, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code + GitHub Copilot, Cline/Roo Code, Qwen Code, Gemini CLI, and others — each with a config example in the repo.

License

Apache License 2.0 (with separate terms for BeatAPI/BeatDesign trademarks, third-party model access, and bundled components).