The Squire docs

▌ Install

Squire runs on macOS 14 or newer, on Apple silicon Macs. Everything it needs to process video, including ffmpeg, ships inside the app. There is nothing else to install.

1. 1Download the DMG. It is signed and notarized by Apple.
2. 2Open it and drag Squire into your Applications folder.
3. 3Launch Squire. The mascot appears, and setup walks you through the rest.

▌ First-run setup

On first launch, Squire walks you through a short setup. Two choices matter:

Your talk key. This is the key you hold while speaking an edit. Pick from ⌥Space, ⌘⇧Space, or F5. You can change it later in Settings.

Permissions. Squire asks for exactly what it uses, and each one maps to something you can see it do:

• ●Microphone: so it can hear the edit you say.
• ●Accessibility: so it can press keys and drive DaVinci Resolve's interface for you.
• ●Screen Recording: so it can read what is on screen before it acts.
• ●Documents folder: so it can find your footage and write finished exports.

▌ Your first edit

So for your first job, pick something small: a short clip with some dead air in it. Hold your talk key and say “cut the silences out of this”. Watch the job run, approve the cut, and you have the whole loop in hand.

▌ Talking to Squire

The loop is: hold, speak, release. Hold your talk key, say the edit in plain words, and let go. Squire figures out the rest: which video you mean, which tool to use, what the edit actually requires.

Prefer typing? Double-click the mascot to open the chat bar and type the same request. It works from anywhere on your Mac.

You do not need special phrasing. Say it the way you would to a person sitting next to you:

• ▶“Cut the dead air out of my last recording”
• ▶“Clip the best 60 seconds for a vertical short”
• ▶“Add captions to the timeline in Resolve”
• ▶“Trim the first ten seconds off my Screen Studio recording”
• ▶“Get this under two minutes”

Squire asks before anything destructive, and shows you the plan before a big cut runs. You approve; it executes.

▌ What you can ask for

Rough cuts. Squire transcribes your footage locally, then removes dead air, false starts, and repeated takes. It shows you the plan; you approve it or tell it what to keep.

Shorts and clips. Ask for the best moments cut to a platform: vertical, captioned, inside the safe zones.

Captions. As a subtitle track in Resolve, or burned into the export.

Resolve operations. Timeline edits, color matching against a reference, renders, and the in-editor chores you would otherwise click through.

Screen Studio projects. Squire edits the project itself: trims, multi-segment cuts, and cleanup on your screen recordings.

Between edits. The chat bar works anywhere on your Mac: find footage, rename exports, open what you need. The edit is the job; this is the bonus.

▌ Revising a finished edit

Finished jobs stay open as threads in the Jobs window. Open one and tell Squire what to change: “too choppy, put the pauses back”, “keep the intro”, “tighter”. It re-plans from the work it already did, so revisions are fast. No re-transcription, no starting over.

▌ Editors it works with

▌ Updates

Squire keeps itself current. It checks for updates automatically, downloads them in the background, and installs on relaunch. Every update is signed; you can also check manually from the app menu.

▌ Troubleshooting

Still stuck? Email us at info@pithoslabs.org or report it on GitHub and we will take a look.