Three months ago, after finishing university, I started a project called Cyclips. I started it both to help my brother with his content creation and to challenge myself in new ways. Initially, I thought I could finish it in one month, but it ended up taking three. Those three months were among the most intense of my life; I spent 16-hour days working solo as an indie hacker. Along the way, I faced discouragement from people around me who suggested I should quit and that my efforts were in vain. But I didn’t give up, and I’m grateful for pushing through and persevering.

Cyclips is a free tool (with video size limitation for free users, with HD output) built with Next.js and FastAPI, alongside frameworks like RabbitMQ and Redis. The backend turned out to be more complex than I’d anticipated. I had to learn and integrate new technologies, such as wav2vec for precise timestamp alignment, as well as OpenAI’s Whisper and other APIs to handle transcription and analysis.

Here’s how Cyclips works: Users can log into the dashboard and input a YouTube video link (with plans to support more platforms in the future). The software then analyzes the video, identifies engaging topics, and automatically generates potential viral clips. It also uses face detection for auto-cropping and adds auto-generated subtitles. To top it off, there’s a clean, interactive video editor to refine your clips to perfection.

I’d love to hear your feedback!

PS: I will be providing updates on my discord community

My Discord server is https://discord.gg/6QdruVzUn9