DEV Community: sakana

I built a $4.99 screen drawing app for coding tutors who teach live on Zoom

sakana — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 10:51:36 +0000

TL;DR: I built Lasso for people who teach on a shared Mac screen and need to point at something without leaving the window. Press Option-Shift-A, draw over your code or slides, press Escape when you're done. Students see the marks if you share the entire display. It's $4.99 once, no subscription. I'm the person who makes it.

If you teach people to code over a video call, you already know the failure mode. You're in VS Code or a terminal, you say "this line, right here," and the student is still hunting for your cursor. On a compressed shared screen, a tiny pointer is a weak teaching tool.

This isn't a new complaint. In r/macapps, someone planning a live tutorial asked for a way to draw, circle, and put text on a shared screen. Another person who runs weekly online lessons wrote that they were stuck with a meeting app's built-in tools, and those tools were not good enough. I just kept seeing the same request, and I already had a Mac app that does this job.

Lasso sits on top of whatever you're already teaching from. You don't switch into a separate whiteboard unless you want to.

A lesson, from a test circle to "any questions?"

When you need to point, press Option-Shift-A. I use numbered steps more than anything else when I walk through a function. Click 1 on the input, 2 on the messy conditional, 3 on the return. The student can follow the order without me saying "no, the other if."

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If a question needs a diagram, press W for a whiteboard (or K for a blackboard), sketch it, then go back to the editor. You can pin a drawing if you want the marks to stay up while you click through the apps underneath.

The keys I actually use

You don't need a tablet just to circle a step

A lot of tutors end up buying a drawing tablet, or pairing an iPad, just so they can write on a problem. That works, and for handwriting-heavy math it may still be better.

It is also, as one tutor put it when schools first went remote, annoying to set up and keep working alongside a laptop camera and a call.

For circling a line of code or numbering three steps, a $4.99 overlay on the Mac you already teach from is a simpler tool.

Lasso is a one-time payment, including tax as shown at checkout, with no account and no subscription. It runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel. It's signed and notarized.

Recording a lesson, or sending a still

The marks are on the screen itself, so they show up in a screen recording of the display you're drawing on. That's the path I have in mind for a short homework recap. Lasso is not itself a meeting recorder.

You can also press S for a full-screen shot, or Shift-S for an area, and drop the annotated image into Slack, email, or the course chat. Screenshots and blur need macOS Screen Recording permission. Drawing alone does not.

Blur, if you need it, is the B key. It's a still patch. It does not follow code as you scroll, so don't treat it like perfect redaction.

A light note on AI, because some of you will ask

Lasso also ships a local MCP server. Claude Code, Cursor, or Claude Desktop can connect on the same Mac, see what you circled, and draw an arrow back. The tools do not click or type into other apps. This is optional, and the teaching workflow above does not depend on it. Setup lives in Settings → Agents, and the MCP guide has the one-liners.

If you do connect an agent, your AI client may send screenshots to its model provider. Don't put a student's homework into a model unless that's appropriate.

What it doesn't do

It's Mac only.

Students do not get their own pen. This is a presenter-side overlay. They can see your marks in the shared display. If you need a shared whiteboard everyone can draw on, use the meeting app's tools for that part.

If people on the call can't see what you're drawing, it's almost always the share source. Stop, share the entire display, and check again.

If you only draw, you can skip Screen Recording permission until you want a screenshot.

If you want to try it on a real lesson

Lasso is at https://www.trylasso.online/. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents, once.

Do a two-minute test share before the first class: draw a circle, ask if it's visible, press Escape. If something about the overlay or the shortcut feels off in Zoom or Meet, tell me which app you were teaching in.

I built a bot-free meeting recorder for founders who still run their own sales calls

sakana — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 10:50:45 +0000

TL;DR: I built Replay to record a sales call without sending a bot into it. It captures Google Meet, Zoom, or Microsoft Teams from your Mac. Nothing joins the roster. The transcript stays on your machine. I'm the person who makes it. $10 USD once in the U.S., before tax, for two Macs.

If you sell, you've probably had this moment. You're on a first call, and a second name shows up in the participant list: someone's notetaker, waiting to be admitted.

The next few minutes go to explaining the tool instead of the product. Otter has described that exact scene. On Reddit, people say it more bluntly. In one Teams thread, a client immediately asked who the bot was and why it was recording. In another, someone wrote that clients often pause mid-sentence when "Fireflies Notetaker has joined."

I don't have a dramatic "this lost me a deal" story, and I'm not going to invent one. It's a bad first impression on a call where first impressions matter.

So I built a recorder that isn't a guest.

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When a bot is actually the right tool

I want to be fair. This is not "bots are always worse."

If you run a sales team and you need every call in the CRM, with coaching scorecards and a manager reviewing a dozen reps, a Gong or Fireflies-style bot is built for that. Replay does not do that. There is no Salesforce or HubSpot integration.

Bots are also fine on internal calls, where everyone already expects a notetaker. The awkwardness people describe is mostly on external calls, especially first ones.

Replay is for a different job: founders doing their own sales, or a rep who wants a private, local copy of a discovery call without adding a participant.

Why "nothing joins" matters on a prospect-hosted call

On a call you host, you can usually admit a bot. On a call the prospect hosts, you often can't.

Microsoft documents that tenants can detect external bots, park them in the lobby, and require an organizer to admit them. Fathom's own Teams setup guide is honest about this: a connected integration is not the same as a successful recording. Zoom has bot protection, and a host can require sign-in, which rejects an unauthenticated bot.

If the prospect's IT has locked that down, you don't get a transcript. You get a bot stuck outside, and sometimes a conversation about it.

Replay never tries to enter the meeting. It records the window on your Mac.

The recording, transcript, and notes stay in ordinary files under ~/Movies/Replay Recordings/. They are not uploaded unless you explicitly create a Share Link, a temporary public video for 1 to 12 hours.

What you actually get after the call

Video of the selected meeting window, plus the call's audio and your microphone on separate tracks
Transcript lines that start as Me or Them. You can name speakers and fix a line
Local search. Click a passage to jump to that moment
If Apple Intelligence is on, a first-pass summary, decisions, action items, and chapters. Check names and dates against the recording

It runs on Apple silicon with macOS 26 or later. One purchase activates two Macs. After activation and a speech-model download, recording and transcription can run offline.

On price: Replay is $10 once in the U.S., before tax, no subscription. Paddle shows the local total at checkout, and tax varies by country. For context only, Replay's pricing page (checked 7 November 2026) put Fireflies Pro at $18/month and Fathom Premium at $20/month, for one seat. Features differ, and both also have free plans. This is not an apples-to-apples feature chart.

A practical workflow for a discovery call

Tell the prospect you are recording. Replay does not announce itself. A bot in the roster is not consent, and the absence of a bot is not a free pass either. Many places require everyone's consent. Your company may already have a rule. Say it at the start. If they say no, don't record.

I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. Follow the law where you and the prospect are, and your own policy.

What it doesn't do

It's Mac only, and it needs macOS 26.

The video is the call window you selected. On a typical discovery call that's the people: speaker tiles, whoever is large on screen. It does not automatically capture the prospect's screen share as a separate source. If they're walking through a slide and your selected window is still showing faces, the recording will show faces.

In Microsoft Teams, from version 0.2.10, Settings → Recording → "Record what I share in the call" can follow a window or screen you present. That is about what you share, not the prospect's deck.

If you already use Claude Code or Cursor

Replay can run as a local, read-only MCP server:

claude mcp add --scope user replay -- "/Applications/Replay.app/Contents/MacOS/Replay" --mcp

The tools are list_recordings, search_recordings, get_recording, and get_transcript. They cannot edit or delete anything.

The catch, which the docs also state: the MCP connection is local, but a cloud assistant receives whatever transcript it reads. Think about that before you send a confidential call to a model.

If you want to try it

Replay is at https://tryreplay.online/. Ten dollars once in the U.S., two Macs, no bot in the waiting room.

If you try it on a real discovery call, look at the video, not only the transcript, and tell the other person first. I'd rather hear that the picture wasn't what you expected than have you find out later.