It's almost August now, and the first lines of code that became [Bowdler](https://bowdler.app/) go back to December 2025. That's when I got the idea: build an app that does video-to-text transcription fully offline and locally on Mac, as a kind of protest against Descript, Gling AI, TimeBolt, and Recut. It was an insanely ambitious challenge, considering literally everything in this app, every decision, A to Z, is mine alone. And it's still going... It'll keep going until Bowdler is a toolbox of things editors actually need, and I'm only in the middle of that path with useful features like Transcript Edit, Multicam (beta), Silence Removal, Subtitles and Profanity Censorship.

[Transcript Edit mode](https://reddit.com/link/1v9vrwe/video/vbz7vbd2hzfh1/player)

Last week, after about a month of work, I finally shipped the [website](https://bowdler.app/). You can check out what Bowdler does now, and read about my path, personal and technical, here: [bowdler.app/journey](https://bowdler.app/journey/). The app itself costs $59, but anyone can try 8 real exports completely free, with no credit cards and no signups. And no data games either, I barely collect any. There's no data department. It's just me :)

I hope Bowdler could make your work easier the same way it has for dozens of other pros and hobbyists who picked it over cloud tools that cost several times as much. I plan to stick with the human-to-human building approach, with no subscriptions. I know what it’s like to rent software without truly owning it.

I want to say a genuine thank you, FCP community. You stuck with me this whole way. You forgave me a dozen bugs, delays, and everything else. You shared, supported and discussed. And to the user hexxeric from fcp.cafe. He changed my approach to development and made me look at technical challenges in a different way.

A real, human thank you. <3

Feel free to ask anything, I’m always happy to chat!

My previous posts:  
[\[Original Post\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/finalcutpro/comments/1so6gob/a_month_ago_i_posted_about_a_local_ai_video/), [\[One-month Update\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/finalcutpro/comments/1rpt9sh/got_tired_of_boring_editing_and_subscriptions_so/)

8 months in: The Journey of building Bowdler solo (a video processing tool). A midway checkpoint!