How to set up DaVinci Resolve’s AI assistant and MCP server in 2026: 5 ways compared

Disclosure: Enjoy is our product, and it runs Claude Code and Codex. We checked every way below against its maker’s own pages on October 29, 2026, set it up ourselves in DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1.2, and we say where another way is the better pick, including the ones that don’t need Enjoy.

The ways to connect an AI assistant to DaVinci Resolve, compared

Since version 21.1, released on September 8, 2026, DaVinci Resolve Studio has its own MCP server, a standard way for AI assistants to reach other software. “DaVinci Resolve 21.1 now supports integration with AI assistants such as Claude, Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex,” says Blackmagic’s announcement, and its reference manual adds: “You can now control DaVinci Resolve using plain language prompts with your favorite AI assistant and the built-in MCP server.” Blackmagic has written little else about it, and many of the top results for “DaVinci Resolve MCP” are community servers made before it. These are the ways to use it, and the community server for versions without it.

Way	Best for	Price, checked October 29, 2026	Runs on	Resolve it works with
The Claude app	Talking to Resolve in a chat window, on any Claude plan	Free; Pro $20 a month; Max from $100	Mac, Windows; Linux in beta	Studio 21.1 and later
Claude Code	People who already use Claude Code	Included in Pro ($20 a month) and Max (from $100)	Mac, Windows, Linux	Studio 21.1 and later
Codex	People who pay for ChatGPT	Included in every ChatGPT plan, from Free; Go $8 a month; Plus $20	Mac, Windows, Linux	Studio 21.1 and later
Enjoy	Claude Code and Codex in one app, from your phone too	A monthly subscription, free for 7 days, with your phone and other computers (pricing)	Mac, Windows, Linux	Studio 21.1 and later
davinci-resolve-mcp	Older versions, and the free version through 21.0	Free, open source	Mac, Windows, Linux	18.5 and later; the free version through 21.0.x

Prices are per month as each maker lists them in the US, before tax. Every way needs Resolve too, and the first four need Studio, which Blackmagic’s Studio page listed at $295, on sale for $236, when we checked. Enjoy runs Claude Code and Codex on your own Claude or ChatGPT plan, which Anthropic and OpenAI bill for separately.

What you need first

• DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1 or later. Blackmagic’s Studio and iPad features list marks AI Assistants as Studio-only on desktop computers, and not on iPad, and adds: “Requires an MCP-compatible AI assistant.” The free version doesn’t have it. Studio runs on Mac, Windows and Linux.
• An assistant, installed and signed in. Resolve’s setup looks for the assistants already on your computer, so install one before you run it.
• External scripting, if the assistant can’t connect. The assistant works through Resolve’s scripting API. The manual’s page on Preferences > System > General says External Scripting Using is “(Resolve Studio only),” and “When set to None, only scripting in the Console window is allowed.” Set to Local, “external scripts and applications on the same computer can control DaVinci Resolve.”
• A word on the Mac App Store. If you bought Studio there, check first: the features list marks Resolve’s scripting API “Not available in Mac App Store installations.”

How to set it up, in Resolve

1. Install your assistant and sign in. The Claude app, Claude Code, Codex in the ChatGPT app or its CLI, or Enjoy with Claude Code or Codex.
2. Open Resolve Studio and choose File > Setup AI Assistants. Wait for the confirmation. “A configuration confirmation will tell you which AI agents were found on your system,” says the manual, on page 4318.
3. Restart your assistant. “After configuration, AI Assistants may need to be restarted for changes to take effect.”
4. Check that it’s there. In the Claude app, Resolve appears under Extensions in its settings. In a terminal, claude mcp list or codex mcp list shows the servers Claude Code or Codex will start, and /mcp shows them inside Claude Code.
5. Ask something that changes nothing first. One of Blackmagic’s own examples: “Give me a breakdown of the current Resolve timeline, with clip count, total duration, offline media, markers.” If Resolve is closed, the manual says “the extension may opt to launch the application as needed.”

On our Mac, one run of the setup added Resolve to the Claude app as an extension, and to Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build and Antigravity, the last two of which Blackmagic’s pages don’t name. Each entry starts the same program inside the app, /Applications/DaVinci Resolve/DaVinci Resolve.app/Contents/Applications/ResolveMCP. If the setup misses an assistant that takes MCP servers, give it that program yourself, such as with claude mcp add --scope user davinci-resolve -- "<that path>" or codex mcp add davinci-resolve -- "<that path>". Claude Code’s MCP docs explain the --: “Everything after -- is passed to the server untouched.”

What the assistant can do in Resolve

Resolve’s server doesn’t give the assistant a tool for each feature. It gives it Resolve’s scripting API: the assistant looks up the functions it needs, writes a short Python script and runs it in Resolve. In Studio 21.1.2, the server offers 14 tools:

• Scripts. run_script runs “a sandboxed Python 3.14 script with access to the DaVinciResolveScript API,” and “The sandbox blocks filesystem, network and process access.” run_script_unsafe adds “full system access (filesystem, network, subprocess),” for jobs such as “reading/writing media files, running ffmpeg.”
• Documentation. Tools that fetch and search the scripting API and its docs, and get_whats_new, Resolve’s changelog, so a model trained before a release can learn what changed in it.
• Color. Tools that list LUTs and DCTLs, generate a LUT, write a DCTL, which the server compiles first to check for errors, and delete either, in an MCP folder inside Resolve’s LUT folder.
• Resolve itself. Tools that check whether Resolve is running and launch it.

The manual’s example prompts include “Render the current Resolve timeline as ProRes 422 HQ, H.265 4K, and a 1080p H.264 proxy,” “Rename all clips on V1 as Interview_A_001, 002, 003…,” “Apply the Sony SLog3 to Rec709 lut to node 2 of every clip” and “Reframe this timeline for 9:16 vertical.” It also warns: “Any scripts created by the AI assistant share the same access permissions to disk, network and other resources as the AI assistant.”

The Claude app

Best for: talking to Resolve in a chat window, with no terminal, on any Claude plan.

Resolve adds itself to the Claude app, which its manual calls Claude Desktop, as a desktop extension. Anthropic’s pricing lists desktop extensions on every plan, Free included, and its guide to local MCP servers shows where they live: under Extensions, in the app’s settings.

Price: free. Pro is $20 a month, or $17 billed yearly, and the first thing it lists over Free is “More usage.” Max is from $100.

Watch for: the app’s downloads are for Mac and Windows, and “Claude Desktop for Linux is in beta and supports Ubuntu and Debian (x64 and arm64).”

Claude Code

Best for: people who already use Claude Code in a terminal or an editor.

Resolve adds its server to Claude Code at the user level, which Claude Code’s MCP docs describe as “available to you across all projects,” so it’s there in every project folder, not only your Resolve ones. claude mcp list shows whether it’s connected.

Price: Anthropic’s pricing has “Claude Code included” in Pro, at $20 a month or $17 billed yearly, and in Max, from $100. It isn’t on Free.

Watch for: “Claude Code displays a warning when MCP tool output exceeds 10,000 tokens and limits output to 25,000 tokens by default,” which matters when a script returns a long list, such as every clip in a big timeline.

Codex

Best for: people who pay for ChatGPT, in its desktop app, the Codex CLI or an editor.

Resolve writes its server into Codex’s config.toml, and OpenAI’s MCP guide says “The ChatGPT desktop app, Codex CLI, and IDE extension share this configuration,” so one setup covers all three. The desktop app is for “macOS, Windows, or Linux.”

Price: “ChatGPT Work and Codex are included in your ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu, or Enterprise plan,” says OpenAI’s pricing. Go is $8 a month, Plus $20 and Pro from $100.

Watch for: Free and Go get “GPT-6 Luna at Standard speed in the desktop app, subject to rollout,” not OpenAI’s top models.

Enjoy

Best for: driving Resolve from Claude Code or Codex in one app, switching between them, and from your phone.

Enjoy is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux that runs Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Antigravity, Muse Code and local models through OpenCode, on the plans you already have. It runs Claude Code and Codex with their settings on your computer, so the server Resolve’s setup adds to them is there in Enjoy too, with nothing more to set up. On October 29, we asked a Claude Code conversation in Enjoy about Resolve, and it read the open project, its timelines and Studio’s version, 21.1.2. What it adds:

• Approvals you can see. Pick a permission mode, such as Manual, and approve each request on a card that shows what the agent wants to run.
• Claude and Codex in the same conversation. Switch agents at any point, and “The new agent gets the conversation so far, including replies from other agents, before it works on your message.” When Claude Code runs out of usage halfway through a job, Codex can pick it up, with Resolve’s server too.
• Your phone. Connect your phone, and ask for a timeline breakdown or a render from anywhere. Your phone is a window into your computer, where the agent and Resolve do the work, so your computer has to be on and awake with Enjoy open.
• A schedule. A workflow can run a job at a set time, such as exporting the day’s markers to a CSV file.

Price: Enjoy is one monthly subscription, and the first seven days are free, with a card to start. It includes your phone and any browser and your other computers, and each teammate you invite needs a subscription of their own. See pricing.

Watch for: Enjoy doesn’t set Resolve up itself, so run File > Setup AI Assistants in Resolve first. Resolve’s setup reaches the Claude account Claude Code uses outside Enjoy, not other Claude accounts you’ve added in Enjoy. Enjoy isn’t open source, it’s a monthly subscription on top of your Claude or ChatGPT plan once the free week ends, and scheduled workflows run only while your computer is awake with Enjoy open.

davinci-resolve-mcp, from the community

Best for: Resolve 18.5 to 21.0, the free version through 21.0.x, ready-made tools in place of scripts, and assistants Resolve’s setup doesn’t find.

davinci-resolve-mcp, by Samuel Gursky, is “A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI assistants control DaVinci Resolve Studio through the official Scripting API,” with “full API coverage plus guarded workflow helpers” for editing, grading, Fusion and more. It’s free under the MIT license, with more than 3,800 stars on GitHub. Its README asks for “DaVinci Resolve 18.5+ on macOS, Windows, or Linux,” and lists 37 tools by default and 390 in its full server. npx davinci-resolve-mcp setup “can configure Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, Continue, Cline, Roo Code, OpenCode, Codex CLI, and JetBrains IDEs.”

Price: free.

Watch for: it isn’t Blackmagic’s. On Studio, it needs External scripting using set to Local. On the free version, it reaches Resolve through a script that runs inside it, but “Resolve 21.1 moved Python scripting to Studio,” so the README says to “treat the bridge as a 21.0.x path until that is measured.”

When Blackmagic’s setup and one assistant are enough

If you use one assistant at your desk, Resolve’s own setup and that assistant are all you need: the Claude app on any plan, or Codex in the ChatGPT app you already pay for. Enjoy earns its place when you move between Claude and Codex, run out of usage halfway through a job, or want to ask for a render from your phone.

And if you’re on the free version and happy editing by hand, nothing here is a reason to buy Studio. Blackmagic pitches the assistant for chores: “With AI assistant support, our customers can now ask Claude or ChatGPT to handle repetitive tasks,” says its CEO, Grant Petty. Whichever way you choose, try it on a copy of your project first, and keep the assistant’s permissions tight, since its scripts can reach whatever it can.

How we compared

We read Blackmagic’s 21.1 announcement, the DaVinci Resolve 21.1 Reference Manual, its Studio and iPad features list and its Studio page; Anthropic’s pricing, downloads, local MCP guide and Claude Code MCP docs; OpenAI’s MCP guide, desktop app page and pricing; and davinci-resolve-mcp’s README on October 29, 2026, and every one is linked below. We also ran File > Setup AI Assistants in DaVinci Resolve Studio 21.1.2 on a Mac, read the descriptions of the tools its server offers, and drove Resolve from Claude Code in Enjoy. We quote each maker’s own words for its limits and leave out what it hasn’t documented. We recheck this guide against its sources at least once a month, and the date at the foot of the page says when we last did.