Instagram's in-app editing tool that automatically trims your selected raw clips and assembles them into a first-cut Reel on an editable timeline in under 10 seconds. Launched on iPhone August 25, 2026.
Last verified · 2026-08-25 · by Moe Ameen
Instagram First Draft is an in-app editing tool that turns a pile of raw clips into a rough-cut Reel automatically. You select multiple clips — from Instagram's camera while you are recording, or from the Reels gallery after the fact — and tap First Draft. It analyzes the footage, trims the pauses and slack, and drops the trimmed clips onto an editable timeline. Instagram says the first pass lands in under 10 seconds; in a demo, the tool cut nearly five minutes of rollerblading footage down to a roughly 17-second Reel.
The output is a starting point, not a locked export. Every choice First Draft makes is reversible — you can reorder clips, tighten or loosen individual cuts, add music, and keep editing before anything goes live. Instagram positions it as a way to save editing time and lower the barrier for people who find editing software intimidating. Meta announced it on August 25, 2026, and it is rolling out on iPhone first, with no Android date confirmed.
One honest caveat on the "AI" label: Instagram has not marketed First Draft as an AI feature, and reporting indicates Meta describes the underlying technology as machine learning rather than "AI." So treat it as smart automated editing — trimming and sequencing footage you shot — not a generative model that invents new video. It is the same category as Adobe Firefly's Quick Cuts and CapCut's Auto Cut, with the advantage of living inside the app you are already posting from.
The right way to think about First Draft is that it kills the blank-timeline problem: it gets you from raw clips to a watchable rough cut in seconds, inside Instagram. What it does not solve is the one-clip-one-platform problem. That first-cut Reel is a single vertical video meant for one app, and the footage you shot is worth far more than that. [Kompozy](/) is the layer that multiplies it. Take the assembled Reel — or the original clips — feed it into Kompozy as a source, and its [Clipped Shorts](/glossary/content-repurposing) slice the footage into three or four distinct hooks instead of one, each with burned-in captions and reframed to 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9 so the same shoot has a native version for TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels.
Then Kompozy does the part an in-app trimmer structurally cannot: it generates net-new formats from the same material. A brand-exact [Carousel](/glossary/hyperframes) walks through the key beats, a [Persona Short](/glossary/persona-shorts) puts a face-locked avatar on the message for a talking-head cut you never filmed, and quote graphics, a text post, a blog article, and an email newsletter come out of the same source — all in one voice enforced by a [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief). [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) then captions, resizes, and schedules the whole set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email, each asset passing a per-post review gate first. First Draft assembles one Reel; Kompozy turns the footage behind it into a week of on-brand posts everywhere.
First Draft is an in-app Instagram editing tool that automatically trims your selected raw clips and assembles them into a rough-cut Reel on an editable timeline, in under 10 seconds. Meta launched it on iPhone on August 25, 2026. Every cut is reversible before you post.
Select multiple clips from Instagram's camera while recording, or from the Reels gallery afterward, then tap First Draft. It trims pauses and sequences the clips on a timeline you can reorder, re-cut, and add music to before posting. It is on iPhone first.
Instagram has not branded it as AI; reporting indicates Meta describes the technology as machine learning rather than "AI." Practically, it is automated editing — trimming and sequencing footage you already shot — not a generative model that creates new video.
It produces one rough-cut Reel for Instagram. It does not reframe for other platforms, write per-platform captions, generate other formats like carousels, blogs, or newsletters, or publish outside Instagram. It is also iPhone-only at launch, with no Android date announced.
Bring the Reel (or the raw clips) into Kompozy. It cuts the footage into several captioned shorts reframed per platform, and generates a carousel, a persona/avatar short, quote graphics, a blog, and a newsletter from the same source — then schedules the set across the eight social platforms plus blog and email.