Tiny Clipper is the simplest possible clipping tool: paste a link or upload a file, pick a start and an end, get a clip. Where Clipper Overlord is a pipeline for one channel, this is a product for anyone.
The three rules
- No AI. No model picks the moments, no model writes the captions, no model in the product at all. A person chooses the clip. This keeps the per-clip cost near zero and the product honest about what it is.
- No platform in the name. The brand must not lean on any video platform’s name or marks, so it cannot be mistaken for an official tool and does not depend on anyone’s goodwill.
- Not serverless. A clip is a long ffmpeg job. Function-shaped hosting with time limits and cold starts is the wrong fit, so the stack is a small always-on server with a queue.
The stack, locked the same evening
A FastAPI app and a worker process behind a queue, a Vite and TypeScript front end, hosted on a Hetzner box with Cloudflare in front and R2 for files, at roughly twenty dollars a month before any customers. Stripe Checkout for payment when there is something to pay for. The queue exists from day one so a busy hour does not need a redesign.
How it is run
A manager session coordinates, with Opus subagents doing research and design. Five commits landed in the founding half-hour; the rest of the evening produced the market research and the three mockups described in the next entries.