Recorded video is write-only.
Four ways your recorder works against you.
vidspawn exists because all four problems have the same fix: keep the videos where they were made.
Record it once. Find it forever.
Four steps, and every one of them runs on your machine until you decide otherwise.
There's no upload to fail.
vidspawn writes your recording straight to your disk while you record. No streaming to a server, no processing queue, no "we'll email you when it's ready". A dropped connection can't kill a take: there's no connection involved. Stop recording and the file is already there, playable, transcribed on your own machine.
The recording you finished is the recording you have. Every time.
The bug report that carries its own evidence.
Record the Chrome window while you reproduce the bug. vidspawn captures the console logs, page errors and network requests firing inside it, timestamped against the video. Open the Dev tab, click a log line, and the video jumps to the moment it happened. Your agent can pull the same telemetry over MCP.
If you know Jam, this is that workflow, open source: the evidence lands in your local library next to the recording, not in a vendor cloud.
Watch what you did. Read what the page did. One recording.
More on DevTools captureBuilt for the way you work now, with agents in the loop.
vidspawn ships two MCP surfaces out of the box. Your AI tools can list, search and import recordings, read transcripts, start and stop captures, pull console logs and network requests from a recorded debugging session, even cut and render clips. 35 tools over local HTTP, 6 headless over stdio with the app closed.
Your agent"Record my screen while I reproduce this bug, then summarize what happened."
"Find the clip where the deploy failed and pull the console errors."
"Cut the first 30 seconds and render it for the changelog."
The agent comes to the dataTrust it because you can read it.
An app that records your screen and talks to AI agents should not be a black box. vidspawn is open source under AGPL-3.0: audit the capture path, the transcription, the exact moment bytes leave your machine. Spoiler: only when you click Share. No account with us, and no telemetry, the app's only self-initiated network call is the update check (version and OS, documented in the repo).
When you do share, vidspawn sets up your own storage for you: one OAuth click deploys a tiny Worker into your Cloudflare account, or one pasted application key provisions a Backblaze B2 bucket. No middleman either way. Share pages are self-contained: player, transcript, download, expiry. If we disappear tomorrow, your library is files on your disk and your shares run in your account. That's the point.
Your videos never touch our servers by default. The one exception is the optional hosted plan, and choosing it is exactly that: a choice.
Free for individuals. All of it, forever.
Pay when your team joins.
- ✓ Capture, on-device transcription and diarization
- ✓ Hybrid search and the non-destructive editor
- ✓ Both MCP surfaces, all tools
- ✓ Unlimited shares from your own cloud
- ✓ No quotas, no watermarks, no account with us
- ✓ Multi-device sync coming soon, free
The free product is the whole product for one person.
- ✓ Everything in Individuals
- ✓ Shared team library, permissions, member management
- ✓ Runs in your company's own cloud account
- ✓ Recordings never touch a vendor
Not purchasable yet: the waitlist is updates only.
The full team product on infrastructure we run, with the AI layer included: hosted transcription, auto summaries and chapters, ask-your-library. The one plan where recordings touch our servers, by explicit choice. Planned, not yet built.
The Supporter License is from $29, once: pick Supporter, Mega or Giga. Your name and tier in SUPPORTERS.md, and 40% off one team's first year of Teams when it ships.
No quotas. No watermarks. No personal-use-only clause.
Your cloud bill: $0 for individuals, about the price of two coffees a month for a heavy team. On Cloudflare, viewing is free at any volume: R2 has no egress fees.
A fair look at the alternatives
Kept scrupulously fair. If anything here goes stale, open an issue and we'll fix it.
| vidspawn | Loom | Cap | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recording survives a dropped connection | Yes, nothing uploads during capture | Cloud-dependent | Local recording, cloud shares |
| Where recordings live | Your disk and your own cloud | Their servers | Their cloud, or self-host |
| Free tier limits | None from us | 5 min · 720p | 5-min shareable links |
| Open source | AGPL-3.0 | No | Open source |
| Built-in agent (MCP) surface | 35 tools | No | No |
| Team recordings custody | Your company's account | Vendor | Vendor, or self-hosted |
Common questions
Is it really free? What's the catch?
The single-user product is free and open source, permanently. We make money when teams use it together (shared libraries, permissions, member management) and later from a hosted plan with the AI layer included. Individuals are never the revenue model; they're the reason teams show up.
Why do I need my own cloud account to share?
Because the alternative is our server holding your videos. Sharing runs from storage you own: connect Cloudflare with one OAuth click and vidspawn deploys the share infrastructure into your account, or paste one Backblaze B2 application key and it provisions the bucket. Either way we never see a byte, and local recording needs no account at all.
What does the cloud side cost me?
Almost always $0. Shares expire by default, and both Cloudflare's and Backblaze's free tiers cover typical share volumes many times over. Cloudflare asks for a card on file to enable R2; Backblaze does not. A heavy team retaining hundreds of gigabytes pays a few dollars a month. On Cloudflare, viewing is always free: R2 has no egress fees.
Why AGPL and not MIT?
AGPL keeps vidspawn's code permanently open: anyone who ships a modified version, including as a hosted service, must publish their changes. You can read, build and modify everything; nobody can take it proprietary.
Windows or Linux?
macOS first, and macOS only for now: capture quality demanded going deep on one platform. Tell us what you'd need next, it genuinely helps us prioritize.
What happens to my videos if vidspawn shuts down?
Nothing. Your library is ordinary files on your disk, your database is SQLite, your shares run in your own cloud account, and the source is AGPL. There is no server to shut down.
Does vidspawn collect telemetry?
No. The app makes exactly one network call on its own: an update check carrying the app version and OS version, nothing else, and the code for it is right there in the repo. If we ever add usage statistics, they will be opt-in, off by default, documented field by field, and announced in the changelog before they ship. The AGPL source is how you hold us to it.
Can my AI agent really use this?
Yes, that's half the point. Add the local MCP endpoint to your agent and it can search recordings, read transcripts, control capture, and pull DevTools telemetry from recorded sessions. There's also a headless sidecar that works with the app closed.