SMF·LOOM
Can a prompt replace Loom?
Screen recording — screen video + sharing
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Local screen recording is the easy half; a two-part build — a recording tool plus a small share server — gets a working link-sharing loop in a real weekend. What doesn't come with it is Loom's actual polish: truly instant, reliable hosting, viewer analytics, comments, and a shared team library.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on30.07.2026Build a two-part screen-recording tool: a local recording command that captures screen and microphone to a video file, and a small share server on your own domain. On stopping a recording, transcode it to a web-friendly format, transcribe it locally with Whisper, and upload both the video and transcript to your server over a simple authenticated connection. The server serves each recording at an unguessable, unlisted URL: a video player, title, date, and a searchable transcript below it. Print and copy the share link to your clipboard as soon as the upload finishes — the whole loop from stopping the recording to having a shareable link should take under a minute for a short video. Keep the list of all recordings private to you; the share pages themselves are link-only, with no public index anywhere.
Do not build viewer analytics, comments, in-app trimming, or a shared team library — the unlisted link is the entire permission model here, and that's a real, honest gap next to Loom's actual workspace features.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 instant, always-reliable hosting at scale
- B.2 viewer analytics and comments on the recording
- B.3 in-app trimming
- B.4 a shared team library
- B.5 browser-extension recording
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: hosting/collaboration
A Loom link works everywhere and preserves context for whoever watches it later — people pay for that reliability and the workflow around it, not for the ability to record a screen.
Questions
Can I import my existing Loom recordings?
Loom lets you download your videos individually, and those download fine as source files for this build's server. Comments, viewer analytics, and view counts don't come across — that history only exists inside Loom.
Will it work on my phone?
Watching a shared recording works fine on a phone browser. Recording itself is a desktop capture tool, tied to your computer's screen and microphone, not something a phone version of this build handles.
What does it cost to run?
Hosting and storage for your own videos, typically a few dollars a month at personal volume, growing with how much video you keep — there's no per-recording or per-viewer fee.
What's the one thing that doesn't survive the rebuild?
Knowing who's watching. Loom shows you view counts, who watched how much, and lets people comment inline on a timestamp; an unlisted link is genuinely just a link — you'll never know if it was watched at all.
Related tools
Receipt