“Claude cuts my TikTok”: How this creator is scaling video with AI | Brooke Lacey

Brooke Lacey has been creating videos since before Facebook video existed, building a sizable TikTok following of over 290,000 by personally editing her content to ensure perfect jump cuts, pacing, and humor. With a tech background spanning more than 25 years, she developed her own apps, including Zosha, a free learning AI app. She explains that her early experience with video was natural but short-form content creation, especially TikToks, became challenging due to the tedious process of editing. Brooke describes how she often spends hours editing a single video to get it just right, adjusting for facial expressions, timing, and humor, especially for her signature jump cuts. Her desire was to streamline this process, as her audience responds well even to simple spontaneous videos, but the editing remains time-consuming. She notes that her content focusing on tech and humor often requires meticulous cut timing, which she used to do manually, taking hours per video.

Brooke shares her discovery of using Claude Code, combined with FFmpeg, Whisper, and Python, to automate her video editing workflow directly on her MacBook, eliminating the need to upload files to external services. She describes running all editing commands in her terminal, pulling raw footage from her computer, and instructing Claude to make cuts, add captions, and generate a polished short-form video in about 15 seconds. Brooke emphasizes how her system catalogs the entire editing process as simple text instructions, with the files remaining on her local device. She demonstrates how she can direct Claude to trim clips, select the best cadence, and incorporate her signature humor and style without manually doing any editing—effectively descended upon her content by AI.

Brooke discusses how she trained Claude to understand her unique cadence, humor, and editing style, including how to create engaging hooks and humor with specific sound cues. She describes her method of using her TikTok videos and comments as a corpus for the AI to analyze her style, then applying this knowledge for content generation and editing. This process involves downloading her TikTok videos to Google Drive, then instructing Claude to read comments and analyze engagement patterns to come up with new ideas. She also mentions that she’s used the AI to generate scripts for her videos—especially her signature two-person dialogues and complex explanations—making her content creation more efficient. Brooke notes that she seldom posts more than once a week now because her accumulated followers and content strategy keep her audience engaged, though she’s considering more live streaming.

Brooke explains that she leverages her TikTok comment data to mine ideas for new videos, using Claude to analyze the comments and identify popular topics. She uploaded her TikTok videos and comments into Google Drive, then instructed Claude to scrape comment threads, identify trending themes, and generate scripts tailored to her style. One example involves analyzing a viral video about AI in healthcare, where comments reflected curiosity and concern; Claude used this input to suggest new content ideas. She highlights how this process allows her to maintain audience engagement by continuously producing relevant content without manually researching or scripting, saving her hours. Brooke emphasizes that her approach includes training Claude on her speech cadence, humor, and storytelling patterns, making the AI a partner in content creation.

Brooke shares her plans to expand her live streaming and social media presence, hoping to diversify her content and connect with her audience more directly. She notes she posts only about once a week because her prior efforts over years have established a strong base, allowing her to reuse and repost content. Brooke discusses her perspective as a Gen Xer who experienced the rapid evolution of technology firsthand and encourages older technologists to share their insights and stories, particularly in the AI space. She reflects on her journey from the early days of computers and the Y2K scare to modern AI, emphasizing the importance of preserving technological history and experiences. During the episode's closing, she jokes about prompt engineering and how she prompts Claude to avoid disappointment, including her complex ‘lane OS’ and memory lane system—multiple layers of instructions and reference files—to ensure proper AI responses.