About ScribeShot

ScribeShot is a local-first macOS app for turning YouTube videos into structured notes, screenshots, chapters and mind maps. It was built by Rakesh Kalra.

Why this exists

There are plenty of tools that will give you a YouTube summary. Most of them return the same thing: a few bullet points extracted from the transcript, the spoken words without any of what was on screen. For a lecture where the diagram on the whiteboard is the whole point, or a coding tutorial where the useful part is in the terminal window, that is not actually useful.

The specific problem ScribeShot is built to solve is the gap between watching and having something to keep. Watching is slow and passive. A summary is too thin and has no timestamps. What works is structured notes with the visuals captured in context — the screenshot filed under the heading it belongs to, not in a separate folder of anonymous images.

The second thing that bothered me was the subscription model. Learning tools charge monthly even though a student's intensive use is seasonal and a developer's use is sporadic. If a tool is genuinely useful it should cost once, not indefinitely, and the files it produces should keep working without the app installed.

The design principles

• Local-first. Notes, screenshots, transcripts, and chat history stay on your machine. Nothing is uploaded to a ScribeShot server. The app works offline once the model is downloaded.
• Plain files. Output is standard Markdown and image files in a folder you choose. They are readable in any editor, importable into any vault, and yours permanently.
• One-time price. A lifetime licence means no recurring cost and no incentive to make the format proprietary.
• macOS quality. ScribeShot is a native desktop application built for Mac, not a web app running in a shell. The screenshot workflow, the local model integration, and the video player are all built for the platform.
• Honest about limitations. YouTube only. macOS only for now. Transcripts must exist. These are real constraints and they are documented rather than hidden.

Who it is built for

The people who get the most out of ScribeShot tend to have a specific problem in common: they watch long, information-dense videos and need something to show for it. That includes students working through recorded lectures, developers who learn from conference talks and screencasts, researchers keeping notes on long-form interviews, and anyone who finds rewatching a video to find one thing an unacceptable way to spend time.

The ADHD and focus-related use case was not something I originally planned for, but it is one of the most consistent pieces of feedback: chapters and AI Video Highlights let someone work through a long video in short passes, picking up where they left off without losing the thread.

Get in touch

The best place to ask questions, report bugs, or suggest something is the ScribeShot Discord community. I read everything there.