Experimental

Instagram Reels as readable transcripts

Vocateca transcribes Reels and videos locally on your Mac, so the ideas you scroll past become text you can search, quote, and keep.

Player and transcript, side by side. Product screenshot coming soon.

How it works

Paste a link
Drop an Instagram Reel or video URL into Vocateca, or follow a creator to pull their new posts in automatically.
Transcribe locally
The audio is transcribed on-device — nothing is uploaded. You keep the text and the original never leaves your Mac.
Search and export
Read the timestamped transcript, jump to any line, and export to Markdown, plain text, or your notes app.

Most online transcribers upload your video to a server. Vocateca runs the model on your own machine — private by default, no per-minute fees.

Vocateca versus typical online Instagram transcribers
Feature	Vocateca	Online tools
Where audio is processed	On your Mac, offline	Uploaded to their servers
Cost model	One app, no per-minute fees	Per-minute or subscription credits
Follow creators	Auto-pull new Reels	One URL at a time
Timestamps	Per-line, clickable	Often plain text only
Export formats	Markdown, TXT, SRT, VTT, JSON	Limited or paywalled
CLI + MCP	Yes — scriptable, LLM-ready	No
Data retention	You own the files	Stored on their servers
Works without an account	Yes	Usually sign-up required

In short: If a Reel is worth reading twice, transcribe it once — locally — and keep the text for good.

Markdown for notes, SRT/VTT for captions, JSON for pipelines. Pick what your workflow needs.

Subscribe to the accounts you care about and Vocateca queues their new Reels for transcription automatically.

Transcription runs on-device. No uploads, no third-party servers, no account required.

For power users

The same engine ships as a CLI and an MCP server, so you can transcribe an Instagram link from a script or hand it to an LLM agent.

Open-core: the CLI and MCP server are Apache-2.0.

Terminal

vocateca transcript https://www.instagram.com/reel/XXXXXXXXX/