Terms of service.

Last updated: 20 July 2026

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you ("you", "your", or "User") and Comaze FZCO, a free zone company incorporated with the International Free Zone Authority (IFZA), Dubai, United Arab Emirates, trading as SmashCut ("SmashCut", "we", "our", or "us"). They govern your access to and use of the SmashCut desktop application, the local MCP server it provides, any paid plans, and the smashcut.io website and related services (together, the "Service").

By downloading, installing, accessing, or using the Service you confirm that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms and to our Privacy policy, which is incorporated by reference. If you do not agree, do not download, install, or use the Service.

1. Definitions

• "App" or "Software" — the SmashCut desktop video editor for macOS and Windows, including all components, updates, and documentation.
• "MCP Server" — the local Model Context Protocol server that the App runs on your device (by default at http://127.0.0.1:19790/mcp) to let compatible agents issue editing commands as tool calls.
• "Agent" or "Third-Party Agent" — any AI assistant, model, or automation tool that you connect to the MCP Server, such as Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Codex. Agents are provided by third parties, not by SmashCut.
• "Your Content" — the footage, audio, images, project files, transcripts, timelines, edits, exports, and other material you import into or create with the App.
• "Account" — the account you create to use the MCP Server or to purchase a paid plan.
• "Credits" — the metered allowance for Agent tool calls made over the MCP Server, as described in Section 6.
• "Plans" — the Free, Pro, and Enterprise tiers described at smashcut.io/pricing.

2. The Service, in brief

SmashCut is a local-first desktop video editor. The App, your media, your projects, transcription, and rendering run on your own device. You do not need an Account to install the App or to edit by hand, and editing by hand is unlimited and free.

Using the MCP Server does require a signed-in Account, because Credits are metered per Account and only one device may hold the active MCP slot at a time.

SmashCut does not itself provide a cloud AI model. Instead the App exposes a local MCP Server that you may connect to an Agent of your choice. We meter those tool calls as Credits and, for that purpose only, our servers receive limited usage and licensing information — never Your Content. What we do and do not collect is described in the Privacy policy.

We may modify, add, suspend, or discontinue features of the Service at any time, as described in Section 13.

3. Eligibility and age

You may use the Service only if you can form a binding contract with SmashCut and are not barred from doing so under any applicable law.

You must be at least 16 years old, or the minimum age of digital consent in your country of residence, whichever is higher. If you are under 18 (or the age of majority where you live), you may use the Service only with the involvement and consent of a parent or legal guardian, and only that parent or guardian may purchase a paid Plan or provide payment information. The Service is not directed to children under 16.

4. Licence to use the software

Subject to your compliance with these Terms, SmashCut grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable licence to download and install the App on devices you own or control, and to use it for your personal or internal business purposes, including commercial video work.

This is a licence, not a sale. SmashCut and its licensors retain all right, title, and interest in and to the Software. Except as expressly permitted, and except to the extent applicable law (including EU/UK law on interoperability) prohibits restricting it, you must not:

• copy, resell, rent, lease, lend, distribute, host, or commercially exploit the Software or offer it as a service to third parties;
• modify, translate, adapt, or create derivative works of the Software;
• reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, or attempt to derive its source code;
• remove, obscure, or alter any proprietary notices or SmashCut branding, except as permitted in your exported work;
• circumvent, disable, or interfere with any licensing, metering, security, or Credit-enforcement mechanism, or access the Service using a method other than the interfaces we provide;
• use the Software in violation of applicable export-control or sanctions laws (see Section 19).

5. Accounts

You do not need an Account to install the App or to edit by hand. You will need an Account to use the MCP Server, and to purchase or manage a paid Plan.

Accounts are created and authenticated through our identity provider, Clerk. You agree to provide accurate, current, and complete information and to keep it up to date. You are responsible for safeguarding your credentials and for all activity under your Account, and you must notify us promptly at dev@smashcut.io of any unauthorised use. We may refuse, suspend, or reclaim any Account at our reasonable discretion, including where required by law or to protect the Service.

6. The MCP Server and third-party agents

This Section is important. Please read it carefully.

6.1 Local by design. The MCP Server runs on your device and by default binds to the loopback address 127.0.0.1, meaning it is reachable only by software running on that same device. You are responsible for your device's security and for any Agent or other software you choose to connect to it. If you expose the MCP Server beyond your device, you do so at your own risk.

6.2 Agents are third parties. Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Codex, and any other Agent are products of third parties and are governed by their own terms and privacy policies, not by these Terms. SmashCut does not control, and is not responsible for, an Agent's behaviour, availability, outputs, pricing, or how it handles data you provide to it. When an Agent reads project information through the MCP Server in order to perform an edit, that information is processed by the Agent and its provider under their policies. Do not connect an Agent to projects containing information you are not permitted to share with that Agent's provider.

6.3 You stay in control. Every Agent action is applied as a visible, attributed, and undoable edit on your timeline. An Agent can undo its own edits but not yours. You are solely responsible for reviewing, accepting, and keeping backups of your work. SmashCut is not liable for edits, deletions, overwrites, exports, or other changes made by an Agent you connect, or for any resulting loss of or damage to Your Content. We strongly recommend maintaining independent backups of source footage and important projects.

6.4 Connection and metering. Editing by hand is always free and local. Credits meter Agent tool calls made over the MCP Server. To operate and enforce the Credit system, the App maintains a connection to our servers while the MCP Server is running and transmits limited usage and licensing information — the name of each tool call and its timestamp, a device identifier and device name, and your Account and plan status. This does not include Your Content. If that connection cannot be re-established, the MCP Server stops until it can be verified again. See the Privacy policy for detail.

7. Credits, plans, and fair use

7.1 Plans. Current Plans, features, and prices are described at smashcut.io/pricing. The Free tier includes a periodic Credit allowance for Agent tool calls. The Pro tier provides unlimited Credits for use on one active device at a time, subject to fair use. Enterprise terms are agreed separately.

7.2 Fair use of "unlimited". "Unlimited" Credits are intended for normal use by a single person on one active device. They may not be shared across users or devices, resold, pooled, or used to build a competing or derivative service, and may not be consumed through scripted, automated, or abusive patterns designed to place an unreasonable load on the Service. We may apply reasonable technical limits, rate limits, or temporary throttling to protect the Service, and may investigate and act on suspected abuse under Sections 5, 9, and 15.

7.3 Changes to allowances. We may adjust Free-tier Credit allowances and fair-use thresholds on reasonable notice. Changes to paid pricing are governed by Section 8.

8. Payment, subscriptions, and renewals

8.1 Billing. Paid Plans are billed in advance on a recurring basis through our payment processor, Stripe. Prices are stated in US dollars unless otherwise shown and are exclusive of taxes unless stated. You authorise us and Stripe to charge your payment method for all applicable fees and taxes.

8.2 Auto-renewal. Subscriptions renew automatically for successive periods at the then-current price until cancelled. You may cancel at any time from Account → Plan & Billing or by contacting dev@smashcut.io; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and you retain paid access until then.

8.3 Refunds. Except where required by applicable law (including the consumer rights in Section 9) or as expressly stated in a specific offer, fees are non-refundable, and partial periods are not refunded or prorated. Cancelling stops future renewals; it does not refund the current period.

8.4 Price changes. We may change fees for paid Plans. We will give reasonable prior notice of any increase applying to your subscription, and the new price takes effect at your next renewal after the notice period. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the change takes effect.

8.5 Failed payments. If a charge fails, we may retry, suspend paid features, or downgrade your Account to Free until payment succeeds. You are responsible for any taxes associated with your use of paid Plans, except taxes on our net income.

9. Consumer rights and cancellation

Nothing in these Terms limits any non-waivable statutory rights you have as a consumer under the laws of your country of residence, including under UAE Federal Law No. 15 of 2020 on Consumer Protection, the EU Consumer Rights Directive, and equivalent UK and other laws.

If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK, or another jurisdiction granting a withdrawal or "cooling-off" right, you may normally cancel a purchase of digital services within 14 days. However, because paid features are supplied digitally and on demand, you expressly request that supply begins immediately upon purchase and acknowledge that you therefore lose the right of withdrawal once supply has begun, to the extent permitted by law. Where a mandatory refund right nonetheless applies, we will honour it.

10. Your content and ownership

10.1 You own Your Content. As between you and SmashCut, you retain all right, title, and interest in and to Your Content. Your Content stays on your device; we do not collect, host, or store it on our servers, and we do not use Your Content — including your media, project files, prompts, transcripts, timeline edits, generated assets, or exports — to train any AI or machine-learning model.

10.2 Your outputs are yours. Subject to these Terms and applicable law, you may use what you create with the App freely, including for commercial projects, with no watermark and no SmashCut royalty.

10.3 Your responsibility for Your Content. You are solely responsible for Your Content and for ensuring you have all rights, licences, consents, and permissions necessary to import, edit, and distribute it — including rights in footage, music, images, fonts, and the likeness, voice, and personal data of any individual who appears in it.

11. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the Service to, and not to help or permit anyone else to:

• violate any applicable law, or infringe or misappropriate any third party's intellectual property, privacy, publicity, or other rights;
• create, edit, or distribute content that is unlawful, or that constitutes child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, or unlawful harassment, defamation, or incitement to violence;
• create or distribute deceptive synthetic or manipulated media intended to defraud, impersonate, or mislead, or that violates the law or a third party's rights;
• upload or transmit malware, or interfere with, disrupt, probe, or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the Service, our systems, or any account;
• circumvent Credit metering, licensing, device limits, or other technical protections, or use the Service to build a competing product or to train a competing model;
• resell, sublicense, or white-label the Service without our prior written permission.

We may investigate suspected violations and act under Sections 5 and 15. Because your projects reside on your device, we do not monitor Your Content.

12. Third-party platforms and services

The Service lets you export files for use on third-party platforms (for example TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) and to connect third-party Agents. Your use of any third-party platform, service, or Agent is governed by that third party's own terms, and you are responsible for complying with them, including their rules on AI-generated or synthetic media disclosure. SmashCut is not responsible for third-party services and does not endorse them.

13. Updates, beta features, and changes

We may release updates, upgrades, patches, and bug fixes for the App, and the App may check for and install these automatically to keep the Service secure and functional. You may be required to install updates to continue using certain features.

We may offer features labelled beta, preview, or experimental. These are provided "as is", may be changed or withdrawn at any time, may be less reliable, and are excluded from any service commitments.

14. Intellectual property

The Service, including the Software, the MCP Server, the website, and all related algorithms, designs, text, graphics, and the SmashCut name and logos, is owned by SmashCut and its licensors and protected by copyright, trademark, and other laws. Except for the licence expressly granted in Section 4, no rights are granted to you. You may not use SmashCut's names or logos without our prior written permission, except to truthfully identify SmashCut as the tool you used.

If you send us ideas, suggestions, or feedback, you grant SmashCut a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free licence to use them for any purpose without obligation to you.

15. Suspension and termination

15.1 By you. You may stop using the Service at any time and may cancel a paid Plan as described in Section 8. You may uninstall the App to end the licence in Section 4.

15.2 By us. We may suspend or terminate your access to all or part of the Service, or a paid Plan, with or without notice, if we reasonably believe you have breached these Terms, if required by law, to protect the Service or other users, or for prolonged inactivity or non-payment. Where the reason is not serious and the law requires it, we will give reasonable notice and an opportunity to cure.

15.3 Effect. On termination the licence in Section 4 ends and you must stop using the Software. Your locally stored projects and media remain yours and on your device. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 4, 10, 11, 14, 16–19, and 21) survive termination. If we terminate a paid Plan other than for your breach, we will refund any prepaid, unused fees on a pro-rata basis.

16. Disclaimers

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; that results, transcripts, captions, or Agent-driven edits will be accurate, complete, or meet your requirements; or that defects will be corrected.

You are responsible for maintaining backups of Your Content. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of the above may not apply to you, and nothing here excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law.

17. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SmashCut and its officers, directors, employees, and suppliers will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, footage, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms, even if advised of the possibility.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SmashCut's total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms will not exceed the greater of (a) the total amounts you paid to SmashCut in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the liability, or (b) US $100.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any non-waivable consumer rights.

18. Indemnification

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless SmashCut and its officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and reasonable expenses (including legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your use of the Service; (b) Your Content, including any claim that it infringes a third party's rights or any law; (c) your connection or use of any Third-Party Agent; or (d) your breach of these Terms or of any applicable law. This Section does not apply to the extent a claim results from SmashCut's own breach or negligence, and does not apply to consumers except to the extent permitted by law.

19. Export controls and sanctions

The Software may be subject to export-control and economic-sanctions laws of the UAE, the United States, the European Union, and other jurisdictions. By using the Service you represent that you are not located in, and are not a national of or ordinarily resident in, a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions, and that you are not on any restricted-party or sanctions list.

20. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. We will post the updated Terms here and update the "Last updated" date, and for material changes provide reasonable additional notice where required. Changes take effect when posted unless stated otherwise. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance. If you do not agree, you must stop using the Service and may cancel any paid Plan.

21. Governing law and disputes

These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates, as applied in the Emirate of Dubai, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules and excluding the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

Subject to any mandatory rights you have as a consumer to bring proceedings in your country of residence, the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

22. General

Entire agreement. These Terms and the Privacy policy are the entire agreement between you and SmashCut regarding the Service.

Severability. If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in effect and the provision will be modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our consent. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.

Force majeure. We are not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.

Notices. We may give notice by posting on the website, in the App, or by email to your Account. You may contact us at dev@smashcut.io.

Language. These Terms may be provided in translation for convenience; the English version governs in case of conflict, except where the law of your country of residence requires otherwise.

23. Contact

Comaze FZCO
A free zone company incorporated with the International Free Zone Authority (IFZA)
DSO-IFZA, IFZA Properties, Dubai Silicon Oasis
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
dev@smashcut.io