Index your video hoard by face, object, and whispered word
Edit Mind turns your local video archive into a searchable knowledge base by indexing speech, faces, and objects with multi-modal AI.

What it does Edit Mind watches folders of video files and runs a background AI pipeline to extract transcripts, recognize faces, detect objects and text, and analyze scenes. It stores these multi-modal embeddings in ChromaDB and serves a web interface where you query your library in natural language—“find the shot with the red car and the director speaking”—without touching a cloud API unless you opt into one. The whole stack ships as Docker containers, with a CUDA variant for GPU acceleration.
The interesting bit The project is essentially a polyglot mini-platform: a TypeScript/React frontend and Node.js job queue talk to a Python ML service running PyTorch, Whisper, and friends. The author also sells a desktop app with DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro integration to fund the free self-hosted version—a refreshingly honest way to keep the lights on.
Key highlights
- Runs fully offline via Docker Compose, with local Ollama support for NLP and an optional Google Gemini fallback.
- Indexes by spoken word, face identity, objects, on-screen text, and scene context.
- Vector semantic search through ChromaDB lets you jump to specific moments with plain-English queries.
- Monorepo architecture using pnpm workspaces, React Router v7, Express/BullMQ, and Prisma-backed PostgreSQL.
- A paid desktop edition offers one-click install and direct NLE integration for macOS and Windows.
Caveats
- The README explicitly warns the project is not yet production-ready, with incomplete features and occasional bugs.
- “Fully local” is configurable but not guaranteed: you can route NLP through the Google Gemini API instead of Ollama.
- The self-hosted path still requires Docker comfort; the author built the desktop app partly because users complained about server setup.
Verdict Video editors, archivists, and self-hosting tinkerers with sprawling local libraries should track this closely. If you need a bulletproof, finished asset manager today, wait for v1.0—or preorder the desktop app.
Frequently asked
- What is IliasHad/edit-mind?
- Edit Mind turns your local video archive into a searchable knowledge base by indexing speech, faces, and objects with multi-modal AI.
- Is edit-mind open source?
- Yes — IliasHad/edit-mind is an open-source project tracked on heatdrop.
- What language is edit-mind written in?
- IliasHad/edit-mind is primarily written in TypeScript.
- How popular is edit-mind?
- IliasHad/edit-mind has 1.7k stars on GitHub.
- Where can I find edit-mind?
- IliasHad/edit-mind is on GitHub at https://github.com/IliasHad/edit-mind.