Driving DaVinci Resolve's Free Edition with Claude, From Inside the App

이영준 (leesam) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 09:11:47 +0000

The wall
Every MCP server that controls DaVinci Resolve connects to it the same way: a script running outside the app calls into Resolve's scripting API over the network. That works fine on Resolve Studio. On the free edition it doesn't work at all — Lite is sandboxed and blocks any script that isn't launched from inside Resolve itself.

The one door left open
Free Resolve still runs Python scripts launched from its own Workspace > Scripts menu. A menu script gets the resolve object injected for free, can run a long-lived loop, and — because the sandboxed app ships the com.apple.security.network.server entitlement — can open a localhost listening socket. That's the whole trick: the MCP server is the menu script.

Claude Code ──HTTP JSON-RPC (MCP)──▶  127.0.0.1:8765/mcp
                                          │   server runs INSIDE Resolve
                                          │   (Workspace > Scripts > Utility)
                                          ▼
                              command queue → main script thread
                                          ▼
                              global `resolve` object → Resolve API

What it gets you
157 tools across editing, color, render, media pool, and Fusion title styling — driven from plain-language requests in Claude Code. Zero dependencies: pure Python standard library, so there's nothing to pip install into Resolve's bundled interpreter.

Try it

git clone https://github.com/2sem/davinci-resolve-lite-mcp.git
cd davinci-resolve-lite-mcp
./install.sh

macOS only for now. Full tools reference and demo video in the repo.

DEV Community: 이영준 (leesam)

Driving DaVinci Resolve's Free Edition with Claude, From Inside the App