3 Free Tools That Add Pro Sound Effects to Your Claude Edits

Claude can cut and animate a video now, but the sound it picks still gives it away. Three free tools fix that, and Claude Code can run all three for you.

Openverse finds the sound: over 5 million openly licensed audio clips, searchable with no API key, so Claude can grab a whoosh on its own. Real SFX places it: a free Claude Code skill that puts real recorded effects on the exact frame and keeps your music and voice. earshot makes it: open-source "ears" that let Claude listen back to an edit, then build a new sound in code when nothing fits.

Below are the setup steps, the prompts to paste, and the licence check to run before you post.

How do you add sound effects with Claude Code?

What you need: Claude Code, Python 3.10 or newer, and FFmpeg.

1. Install Real SFX

On a Mac or Linux:

git clone https://github.com/Clipwing/skills.git clipwing-skills
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -R clipwing-skills/skills/real-sfx ~/.claude/skills/

On Windows (PowerShell):

git clone https://github.com/Clipwing/skills.git clipwing-skills
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$HOME\.claude\skills" | Out-Null
Copy-Item -Recurse "clipwing-skills\skills\real-sfx" "$HOME\.claude\skills\"

Restart Claude Code. Real SFX comes with 78 free interface sounds (CC0), and you can point it at your own sound folder in its settings file.

2. Let Claude find sounds on Openverse

Paste this into Claude Code, changing the sound and the moment:

Use the Openverse API to find a CC0 whoosh for the logo reveal at 0:04. Search https://api.openverse.org/v1/audio/?q=whoosh&license=cc0, pick the best short one, download it into my sounds folder, and tell me its title and where it came from.

3. Add the sound design

Add sound design to this render.

Real SFX finds the moments that need a sound, places real effects on the exact frame and keeps your music and voice. You get a new MP4, a separate SFX track (WAV) and a short report with the five moments to check by ear.

4. Give Claude ears with earshot

git clone https://github.com/Leonxlnx/earshot && cd earshot
python -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -e ".[mcp,llm,dev]"
claude mcp add earshot --scope user -- /path/to/earshot/.venv/bin/python -m earshot mcp

On Windows, use .venv\Scripts\python instead of .venv/bin/python. It runs on your CPU, and the first run downloads about 1.1 GB of listening models. Then ask:

Use earshot to listen back to the new render. Tell me which effects sound off or land late, and make a replacement in code for anything that doesn't fit.

The rule

Check each sound's licence before you post. CC0 needs no credit; CC BY sounds need the creator credited in your caption.

What does each sound effects tool do?

Openverse: Claude searches 5 million sounds for you

Openverse is a free search engine for openly licensed media, run as a WordPress project since it took over Creative Commons' CC Search in 2021. Its audio index holds over 5 million clips, many of the sound effects from Freesound, and the public API needs no key for basic searches. That's what lets Claude search for "a whoosh for the logo reveal" and download the file itself.

Openly licensed doesn't mean you can use everything. Some sounds are non-commercial only (CC BY-NC), which rules them out for a video that promotes your business, so keep license=cc0 in the search, or use license_type=commercial if you're happy to credit. Openverse says it doesn't verify each licence, so check the source page too.

Real SFX: real recorded effects on the exact frame

Real SFX is a free Claude Code skill from Clipwing. It finds the moments in your video that need a sound, from your project's cue list, a HyperFrames timeline or the picture itself, and places a real recording from your own library on each one, at the level your own sounds had. Your music and voice stay, and you get the effects as a separate WAV you can drop into Premiere or After Effects.

It doesn't generate sounds and Claude can't hear, so it picks by measured character and names five moments for you to check by ear. On a Mac, its README asks for Homebrew's ffmpeg-full, because the plain ffmpeg formula is missing two filters it uses.

earshot: ears for Claude, and new sounds made in code

earshot is open source, MIT licensed, with over 2,800 stars on GitHub. It turns sound into something Claude can reason about: what a file sounds like in words, a second-by-second listening transcript of a whole film, and a scorecard against seven professional launch films.

When no recording fits, it renders an effect by id from a bank of 252 made in code, or builds a whole sound kit for one film with earshot kit. It runs on your CPU as a command-line tool, a Python library or an MCP server for Claude Code.

For five free repos that let Claude cut, zoom and caption your videos, see our Claude video editing tools. To find the jobs costing your team the most time, take the free AI bottleneck test, or read our insights on AI implementation.