A screen recorder your AI agent can drive

Takereel is a local-first macOS screen recorder with a real command line. Record, cut, and hand off from the terminal — or paste one block into your agent's instructions and let Claude do the whole thing. Every byte stays on your Mac.

Download Takereel for macOS
Free to try — 5-minute recording cap until you own it.

Install the CLI

The binary ships inside the app. One symlink puts it on your PATH:

ln -s /Applications/Takereel.app/Contents/MacOS/takereel-cli /usr/local/bin/takereel

Sixty seconds, no clicks

$ takereel record start --display --mic on
$ takereel record stop
→ ~/Movies/Takereel/Demo.mp4
$ takereel edit Demo.mp4 blade --at 12.5s
$ takereel edit Demo.mp4 lift --seg seg_01
$ takereel look Demo.mp4 --ground 1 --padding 64
$ takereel export Demo.mp4 --share
→ Demo — share/ (video + an offline player page, ready to host anywhere)

Teach your agent in one paste

Drop this into your agent's project instructions (a CLAUDE.md, a system prompt, wherever your agent reads context) and it knows how to operate Takereel:

Takereel is a local-first macOS screen recorder with a CLI at
/Applications/Takereel.app/Contents/MacOS/takereel-cli (symlinked as `takereel`).

Recording (app must be running — `open -b dev.boughten.takereel`):
  takereel record start [--display | --window "Title"] [--mic on|off]
      [--system-audio on|off] [--camera on|off] [--region x,y,w,h]
  takereel record pause | scrap-last | stop    # stop prints the saved path
  takereel takes list --json                   # the library, newest first
  takereel schema                              # machine-readable catalog

Editing (headless — edits the .showfile.json sidecar, never the media):
  takereel edit <take> list
  takereel edit <take> blade --at 12.5s | trim-start --at 3s | trim-end --at 40s
  takereel edit <take> reorder --from 0 --to 2 | lift --seg <id> | restore --seg <id>
  takereel edit <take> undo
  takereel rename <take> --title "..."
  takereel chapter <take> --at 0s --title "Intro"
  takereel look <take> --ground 1 --padding 64 --corner 24

Hand-off (via the running app):
  takereel export <take> [--share | --preview]   # --share = folder w/ offline player
  takereel transcribe <take>                     # on-device speech-to-text
  takereel assist <take>                         # AI title/chapters; needs $TAKEREEL_AI_KEY

Every command accepts --json. Exit codes: 0 ok · 1 failed · 2 usage · 3 app not running.
Takes live in ~/Movies/Takereel; each has a .showfile.json sidecar holding the edit
state. Originals are never modified; nothing is ever uploaded.

The full catalog

Headless commands work on the take's sidecar file directly — no app running, original media untouched, undo journaled across invocations:

Command	What it does
edit <take> list	Print the cut: kept segments, deleted, chapters, look
edit <take> blade --at <t>	Split at an output-timeline position (ms or 12.5s)
edit <take> trim-start / trim-end --at <t>	Trim the segment under that position to start/end there
edit <take> reorder --from <i> --to <i>	Move a kept segment (indices as shown by list)
edit <take> lift / restore --seg <id>	Take a segment out of the cut / bring it back
edit <take> undo	Step back through the persistent undo journal
rename <take> --title <text>	Title the take (drives export and share-page naming)
chapter <take> --at <t> --title <text>	Add or replace a chapter marker
look <take> --ground 0–3 --padding px --corner px	Frame the cut: ground colour, padding, corner radius — burned in at export

App commands talk to the running app over a local, user-only socket (recording and rendering need the app process):

Command	What it does
status	Recorder phase, elapsed time, last saved take, license state
sources list	Capturable displays and windows
record start [flags]	Begin recording: display, window by title, region crop, mic, system audio, camera bubble, annotate overlay, clean desktop
record pause / scrap-last / stop	Pause–resume, drop the last ~10 s, or stop (stopping is saving)
takes list	The library, newest first
export <take>	Render the cut next to the source (never overwrites an earlier cut)
export <take> --share	Cut + self-contained player page in a folder — host it anywhere, zero external requests
export <take> --preview	Temp render for a quick look
transcribe <take>	On-device captions into the sidecar (Apple Speech — audio never leaves the Mac)
assist <take>	AI title and chapters over the transcript with your own key (`$TAKEREEL_AI_KEY`)
license status	Read-only license state
schema	The machine-readable catalog of all app commands

Why agents like it

Self-discovering. takereel schema returns a JSON catalog of every socket command — an agent can learn the surface with one call.
Machine-friendly by default. Every command takes --json and uses honest exit codes (0 ok · 1 failed · 2 usage · 3 app not running).
Non-destructive by design. Edits live in a small .showfile.json sidecar next to the recording. An agent can blade, trim, and reorder all day — the original video is never modified.
Local-first, agent-safe. No cloud between your agent and your video. Nothing uploads, ever; the AI-assist key rides only a local user-only socket.

The socket is a user-only Unix domain socket (0600) — only processes running as you can reach it. Recording still requires the one-time macOS Screen Recording grant, which no CLI can bypass.

Get it

Download Takereel
macOS 15+ · $49.99 once, own it forever · more about Takereel