kneecap
A free, open-source CapCut for iPhone and Android — full mobile video editor, no account, no watermark, no subscription
AI runs on your computer
not yet reviewed by publik. It is live now; the founder has not reviewed this version yet.
by 
K
kneecap
open source · on publik
Where kneecap’s AI runs, and what it costs
Prices are for one typical use: one request of about 1,500 words sent and 375 words back. A higher quality score is better.
On your computer
- Price
- Free per use. Your computer does the work.
- Runs with
- Transformers
- Memory
- —
- Quality
- —
publik API
- Price
- $0.0100 per use, $10.00 per 1,000 usespublik-balanced, the default level
- Quality
- MiMo-V2.6-Pro: 46
- Setup
- Not built into kneecap yet. A publik API key works wherever kneecap takes an OpenAI-compatible address.
Your own key
- Price
- $0.0013 per use, $1.31 per 1,000 usesMiMo-V2.6-Pro at OpenRouter’s list price, before its fee for buying usage
- Quality
- MiMo-V2.6-Pro: 46
- Setup
- Open a provider account, add a card, paste the key into kneecap.
Quality and price, side by side
| Model | Quality | Per 1,000 uses |
|---|---|---|
| On your computer (Ollama, 4-bit download size) | ||
| Granite 4.2 3B2.2 GB | 9 | $0 |
| Phi-4 Mini2.5 GB | 6 | $0 |
| Llama 3.1 8B4.9 GB | 7 | $0 |
| gpt-oss 20B14 GB | 9 | $0 |
| Gemma 4 31B20 GB | 19* | $0 |
| Qwen3.5 35B-A3B24 GB | 19* | $0 |
| publik API | ||
| publik-fastGLM-5.3 Flash | 42 | $1.00 |
| publik-balancedMiMo-V2.6-Pro · kneecap | 46 | $10.00 |
| publik-smartGPT-6 Sol | 48 | $18.00 |
Quality: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.3.2, read 2026-09-22 (publik API models 2026-09-25); * = estimated by Artificial Analysis. Sizes: the Ollama library, read 2026-09-22.
What you pay for
- On your computer: nothing per use. You pay in disk space, memory and electricity, at lower quality.
- publik API: publik’s published price for each use, in dollars, from your publik balance. It is above the model’s cost; the difference runs publik and pays the app’s builder.
- Your own key: the provider’s price, billed to an account you keep with the provider.
How to install kneecap
Every step written out. No terminal experience needed. Pick your setup.
README
Open in GitHubkneecap
A local-first, fully offline mobile video editor, built for CapCut-mobile feature and visual parity.
kneecap is an independent, community fork. It is not affiliated
with, endorsed by, or sponsored by OpenCut, OpenCut-app, CapCut,
ByteDance, or TikTok Pte. Ltd. "CapCut" is referenced in this repo's
planning docs only as a functional/visual parity target for the editor
we're building — no CapCut trademarks, marks, or copyrighted assets are
bundled, redistributed, or reproduced here. See docs/DECISIONS.md for
the full attribution and naming posture.
Based on OpenCut-app/opencut-classic (MIT)
kneecap is forked from
OpenCut-app/opencut-classic
— the archived-but-complete Next.js/Rust engine behind the original
OpenCut web editor — licensed under the MIT License. The original
copyright notice and license are preserved verbatim in LICENSE; see
NOTICE for the attribution statement and docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
for a full inventory of bundled third-party assets and dependency
licenses.
opencut-classic was archived by its maintainers on 2026-05-16. This
fork receives no upstream commits and owns its entire dependency and
security surface going forward — see docs/DECISIONS.md for what that
means in practice. It is unrelated to and not a redistribution of
the separate, actively-developed OpenCut-app/OpenCut rewrite.
What this is
kneecap strips the inherited engine down to its headless editing core — timeline, ripple/placement, effects, storage — and is being rebuilt as a touch-first, CapCut-mobile-shaped editor for iOS and Android, running fully on-device:
- Zero cloud dependency. No account, no server, no paid API of any kind. The app is designed to work correctly with the network off.
- On-device auto-captions, multi-track timeline editing, trim/split, transitions, text/stickers, filters, speed ramping, and hardware-accelerated export — all local.
- No app-store release. kneecap is distributed directly (signed
builds via GitHub Releases + install guides), not through the Apple
App Store or Google Play. See
docs/DECISIONS.md§8.5.
The full architecture and milestone plan lives outside this repo in the
project's planning documents; docs/DECISIONS.md is the in-repo record
of what's been ratified and why.
Current status
This repo is mid-fork: the inherited codebase is a Next.js 16 web app
(apps/web/) with the original desktop shell (apps/desktop/, GPUI) and
Rust/WASM compositor (rust/) still present.
M2 landed the headless engine extraction. The editing engine now
lives in packages/editor-core — EditorCore and its 12 managers,
timeline/placement/ripple/retime, the command system, storage and its
31 migrations, the renderer graph, and the frozen EDL v1 bridge
contract (docs/EDL.md). It contains no React, Next, or UI-library
imports, enforced two ways: the package type-checks standalone with
@/* mapped to its own src only, and scripts/check-headless.mjs
scans every file. apps/web consumes it and keeps working.
The mobile shell (apps/mobile/) does not exist yet — see the plan's
milestone list for sequencing. Treat what remains under apps/web/src
as inherited UI code being progressively adapted, not as the shipped
mobile product.
Project structure
packages/editor-core/— the headless editing engine. Framework- agnostic TypeScript: no React, no DOM-desktop assumptions, no server. Itsreact/subdirectory holds the one React-aware file, theuseSyncExternalStorebridge.schema/edl-v1.jsonis the frozen native-export contract; seedocs/EDL.md.apps/web/— inherited Next.js web application. Now the UI host forpackages/editor-core, and the dev harness for engine work.apps/desktop/— inherited native desktop shell (GPUI), not a build target for this project.rust/— the Rust/wgpu compositor compiled to WASM (rust/wasm) and its supporting crates (rust/crates/{gpu,compositor,effects,masks,time}).docs/— architecture notes,EDL.md(the frozen EDL v1 bridge contract — read this before writing a native exporter),DECISIONS.md(ratified founder decisions),THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md,RELEASING.md(how signed direct-distribution releases are cut — plan M13's no-app-store section), andguides/+publik-listing.md(draft install guides and listing copy; repo docs only, not yet published anywhere).scripts/—offline-audit.{sh,mjs}(the CI gate that keeps the app network-free),invariants.sh(the merge gate),check-headless.mjs(thepackages/editor-coreimport gate), andgenerate-third-party-notices.mjs.
License
MIT — see NOTICE for the required upstream attribution and
docs/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for third-party asset and dependency
licenses.