Community

transcriptcut is a small, local-first, open source project. Contributions — bug fixes, new features, or just filing an issue — are welcome.

Get help / ask a question

Open a GitHub Discussion or Issue — issues are used for both bug reports and questions/ideas on this project. When filing a bug, include what you expected vs. what happened, and your OS/Node/FFmpeg versions if it's a rendering or transcription issue.

Report a bug

1. Check the issue tracker to see if it's already been reported.
2. If not, open a new issue with repro steps and your environment.
3. Found an actual security issue (a path traversal, a way to reach outside DATA_DIR, a secret leaking to the browser)? Please still open an issue describing it — see Security & Self-Hosting.

Contribute code

1. Read CONTRIBUTING.md and claude.md (the full product spec — read it before proposing anything that changes how the app is structured).

2. Set up locally with ./scripts/setup-mac.sh (macOS) or the manual steps in Getting Started.

3. Before opening a PR, all of these must pass (CI runs the same three commands on every PR):

   cd client
   pnpm run lint
   pnpm run test
   pnpm run build

4. If you're changing pure logic (timeline math, transcript mapping, FFmpeg argument/filter-string building, validation, path handling), add or update a test in the matching *.test.ts file.

Project values, briefly

These come up in review, so it's worth knowing them going in:

• Local-first, always. No Firebase/AWS/GCP, no required cloud account. See Architecture.
• Agents reason, tools execute. An LLM never produces or runs raw FFmpeg/shell commands — only structured, validated edit operations. See AI-Assisted Editing.
• No free-text AI command bar. This was tried, worked, and was deliberately removed in favor of scoped, explicit actions. See AI-Assisted Editing for why, before reintroducing it.
• Transcript-first editing is the product, not a traditional Premiere/Final Cut-style timeline editor bolted onto AI features.

Good first areas to help with

• The end-to-end/UI test suite doesn't exist yet (only deterministic Vitest unit tests do) — see the issue tracker.
• The server/ directory is reserved for a future split out of client/ and isn't in use yet.
• Check the Status page and issue tracker for what's currently open.

License

MIT — use it, fork it, self-host it.