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

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.