# ScreenKite Vision

ScreenKite is the capture-first product: a native macOS screen recorder whose recordings open in
a pro editor that both the human and an AI agent can operate. It shares one deterministic editing
runtime (`CoreVideoEditor`) with PilotCut; product differences are configuration
(`ProjectEditorConfiguration.screenkite`), never a fork.

This file is product direction. Architecture invariants live in `AGENTS.md` files; operational
workflow lives in `.agents/skills/`. Update it when a bet ships, dies, or changes shape.

## Who it is for

People who explain software for a living: developers, product marketers, founders, sales,
support and onboarding teams, course makers. The output is a product demo, tutorial, bug report,
walkthrough, or a Loom-style async update that replaces a meeting — not a film. Deliberately
broad: capture is the top of the funnel, and everyone who shows their screen is in it.

## The capture thesis

A screen recording is not a flat video. ScreenKite captures a **structured event stream** —
clicks, cursor paths, keystrokes, per-source audio, speech — alongside the pixels. Everything
downstream derives from that instrumentation:

- today: auto-zoom from cursor clusters, cursor smoothing and re-styling, keystroke HUDs,
  dead-air detection, captions;
- next: the same click stream can become step-by-step documentation, steppable share artifacts,
  and agent-readable context. A flat MP4 can never be retrofitted into those; the capture layer
  is the moat.

Record once, restyle forever: zooms, layouts, backgrounds, cursor are post-hoc, editable
decisions — automation with full manual override, never a black box.

## Where we stand (2026-07 — re-verify before citing)

- Capture: screen/window/area/iOS device/camera, per-app system audio, drift-corrected clocks,
  pause/resume, countdown, crash-recoverable recordings (`RecordingRecovery/`).
- Presenter suite: teleprompter with voice-follow auto-scroll, camera mirror overlay, recording
  hub and in-recording control pill.
- Editor: the shared CoreVideoEditor surface — auto-zoom, scene layouts + DSL (cards/bento/3D),
  overlays, on-device + cloud transcription, captions, BGM/SFX/ducking/denoise, markers with
  notes, ProRes/GIF/FCPXML export, screenshots with OCR/scroll capture/beautify.
- Agent surface: the full 40-tool MCP/CLI contract (`docs/mcp-tools.md` in `apps/mac`), embedded
  bring-your-own-agent chat panel, propose→commit gates, edit history, frame-peek verification.

## Market position (mid-2026)

- Auto-zoom, cursor smoothing, and filler-word removal are **commodities** now — ten-plus mac
  apps ship them. Polish there is table stakes, not differentiation.
- The differentiation nobody else has: **an open, local, agent-operable editor with approval
  gates.** Users on our closest competitor's own feedback board are requesting a "Claude Code
  plugin with approval workflow" — the thing we ship. The incumbent motions are each
  compromised: Descript's Underlord + MCP is cloud-bound and credit-metered; Palmier is local
  and open-source but macOS-26-only, meters generation and hosted chat, and gates nothing —
  every tool call executes immediately.
- The capture-adjacent budget is enormous and validated: recording→documentation tools command
  unicorn valuations while no mac recorder exploits its own click stream for it.
- The Loom-shaped budget (async video for sales, support, and standups) is adjacent and just as
  real — and the incumbent cut its free tier to 25 videos lifetime while its enterprise owner
  looks upmarket. The quick-record, quick-share, meeting-replacement motion is winnable without
  becoming a cloud platform.
- Incumbents are burning trust on billing and reliability (metered-credit bill shock,
  surprise seat upgrades, lost-work reviews). Native, local-first, reliable, honest is a
  position, not a feature list.
- Strategy spine — counter-positioning wedge → switching costs → trust brand — lives in root
  `VISION.md`; full 7 Powers/SWOT analysis in
  `research/strategy-7powers-swot-acquired-2026-07-12.md`.

## Strategic bets (ranked)

1. **Own agent-operable recording-to-video, openly.** Any agent, the user's own model, a local
   project, approval gates. Market it as the category definition — in both directions: agents
   that *edit* the project, and share/export artifacts that agents can *read* (transcript,
   markers, click stream as a structured briefing). Zero-setup entry ships via OpenRouter
   free-model routing, so the first agent experience needs no subscription — BYOM is never the
   price of entry. Implementation direction:
   [Agent-Operable Recording CLI PRD](../../../docs/plans/2026-07-18-agent-operable-recording-cli-prd.md).
2. **One recording → many artifacts.** Video + step-by-step SOP (Markdown/PDF/HTML) + GIF from a
   single capture, driven by the click-event stream we already record. Auto-docs is an export
   format for us, not a new pipeline.
3. **Markers as the post-record planning layer.** Record, annotate intent on the raw footage
   (ranged tags + notes), hand the plan to the agent: rough cut, chapters, zooms, exports per
   `keyPoint`. The pre-edit planning layer on a raw recording is unoccupied market space.
4. **Localization for walkthroughs.** Translated captions and BYO-key dubbing for demo videos —
   the largest async-video incumbent cannot translate a transcript; our BYOM stance makes this
   an integration, not a metered service.
5. **Steppable share artifact.** A lightweight interactive "steps mode" (frame + hotspot +
   caption per click, viewer-paced) from the same instrumentation — demo-tool value at recorder
   simplicity, without chasing HTML sandbox cloning.
6. **On-device PII auto-blur for video.** OCR + pattern matching across frames (emails, keys,
   names). No mac recorder does it; the cloud tools that do gate it behind enterprise tiers, and
   on-device beats their privacy story outright.
7. **Audio depth.** Per-source tracks (mic / system / per-app) with an honest mixer and
   per-track cleanup — the quiet, chronic complaint across every competitor's feedback board.
8. **Reliability as a feature, said out loud.** Local project files, crash-recoverable
   recordings, deterministic exports — we built the machinery; make "your recording cannot be
   lost" part of the product's voice.

## Business model (future shape)

ScreenKite is free today and stays free while PilotCut proves the licensing rails. When
monetization turns on, it reuses the same three-tier structure (rails and schema:
`docs/plans/pilotcut-payment-licensing-backend-design.md` §14), with BYOM never metered at any
tier:

- **Free**: everything that is free today stays free — shipped-free features never re-lock (the
  CapCut anti-pattern). Hosted AI included via OpenRouter free-model routing, honestly disclosed
  in-product: free routes may log or train on prompts and transcripts (text only — footage never
  leaves the Mac).
- **Perpetual**: Proxyman-style buyout + update window, gating net-new pro capability (exact
  shape decided later).
- **Subscription**: hosted AI on paid models + cloud services + a full license while active;
  pricing mechanics deferred together with PilotCut's.

The no-watermark non-goal below stands in every tier: ScreenKite exports stay unbranded — a
deliberate contrast with PilotCut's branded free exports, because capture is the funnel and the
export is the user's work.

## Non-goals

- Not a meeting recorder or a calendar bot.
- Not a cloud video platform: sharing serves the recording; the project stays local and the
  user's data stays theirs.
- Not an avatar factory. Real human + real screen is the authenticity position, and the
  algorithms increasingly agree.
- No burned-in watermarks on exports. The export is the user's work.

## Relationship to siblings

- PilotCut (`apps/mac/PilotCut/VISION.md`) is edit-first; ScreenKite recordings and PilotCut
  projects share the same bundle format, editor runtime, and agent contract.
- Shared thesis + voice: root `VISION.md`. Shared engine: `apps/mac/packages/CoreVideoEditor`.
