Getting started

TLDW documentation

TLDW (“too long; didn’t watch”) turns any video into clean Markdown notes or a reusable agent skill — transcribed 100% locally on your Mac. Use the native app, the tldw CLI, or send videos from your browser. Same engine, your choice.

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The Mac app

Install, set up your AI, and the full notes / skills workflow.

terminal

The CLI

Run the whole pipeline from your terminal. Full command reference.

extension

Browser extension

Send videos to the app from YouTube, X & Vimeo — one click or a batch.

layers

Notes or skills

Produce a note, an agent skill, or both from one video.

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Download

Get the Mac app, or install the CLI from npm.

How it works

Every TLDW run is the same local pipeline: acquire the media (download a link with yt-dlp, or read your file) → extract audio with ffmpeg → transcribe on-device with whisper.cpp (Metal-accelerated) → summarize with your chosen AI → save a Markdown note and/or an agent skill, optionally AI-tagged. Only the summarize step talks to the network — and only if you pick a cloud model. With Ollama it's fully offline.

Quickstart

The app

Download TLDW for Mac, drag it to Applications, open it, and add an AI provider in Settings (or pick Ollama to stay offline). Then paste a link or drop a file and hit Create.

The CLI

Then (one-time) brew install ffmpeg, and you're ready:

Requirements

macOS 14 or later on Apple Silicon. The CLI also needs Node 16+ (for npm) and ffmpeg.

Next →The Mac app