Nucleate

Talk about anything

Nucleate is a desktop app that turns freeform audio into project history. What you did, what blocked you, and where things are heading. Free, fully functional, and ad-free donationware. Donate only if you want to.

Capturing project history

Capturing project history isn't easy or natural, at least for me. I like to make things and move fast, and I find it incredibly challenging to carve out space to capture day-by-day problem solving, actions, barriers, and direction. Days or weeks slip by, and I lose track of what actually happened.

Project managers exist for this reason. In some ways, they are historians that help keep teams aligned. Those folks are invaluable, and often inaccessible, to solo builders and small teams.

I can't hire a project manager, so I tried to build one — a tool that extracts project history from unstructured, freeform audio notes and monologs.

Most people speak at about 150 words per minute. Typing runs closer to ~40, and that assumes you already know what to write. Plenty of apps can transcribe audio and write a short summary. Few can pull real history out of a month of scattered voice memos.

Nucleate is my attempt at what an ASR project-history tool should look like: free, powerful, private, and flexible.

It's not perfect, but it's a powerful and heavily customizable tool for those who would rather talk through projects instead of writing things down.

Want to know what that sounds like in practice? Browse real devlogs produced from voice audio on the full product page. 

What a week looks like

Nucleate is an engine. After setup, it lives in the system tray and watches for new audio. When something lands in the watch folder, it processes the file, summarizes it, and connects that summary into the larger project history.

• Monday - a 15-minute memo about blockers on the drive to work. Nucleate transcribes, summarizes, and writes Markdown.
• Through the week - drop in more recordings when you have something to say. I record daily, even if only to check in.
• Weekend - skim the weekly rollup in Obsidian, Notion, or the Summaries panel. Recurring themes tend to surface across the week.

The more content, the better. Folks tend to talk about like-kind topics, so the models have multiple shots at identifying and raising real progress and barriers that are unique to your specific projects.

Don't worry about stumbling, pausing, or backtracking during recordings. The models will handle it. The best advice I can give is to just start talking.

How the pipeline works | Installation guide

Is Nucleate a fit?

Nucleate is an audio-first, automation tool. Its job is to be an engine that extracts content and pushes it to an endpoint note taking app like Notion or Obsidian. It's quite powerful for users who are willing to record regular audio content but is not a good fit if you're looking for a replacement note taking app or a chatbot.

I will be the first to admit that Nucleate is not perfect. It comes from a solo dev, not a AAA-studio. I've done my best and hope that it differentiates in ways that exceeds its imperfections. What makes it different

Flexibility and customization

Nucleate ships with 20+ user modes and 50+ Insights. Mix, match, and build workflows that fit how you work. If nothing fits, make your own custom mode!

Nucleate Labs (Pro) is a space for one-off ASR processing outside of your main project history and is your "point and shoot" transcription tool.

Pro, for Free

Nucleate is donationware. Automatic transcription, summarization, user modes, Insights, rollups, and local processing are all included. No ads, no subscriptions.

A Pro license is available for free from both Gumroad and Itch. It enables unlimited weekly processing and Nucleate Labs. Donate only if you choose to, no pressure.

If you got a copy of the binary from elsewhere and do not have a license, the Free version will activate. The Free version gives five new items per week — enough to learn the workflow and see real rollups.. This is also what you get if someone shares only the app binary.

There are a lot of ASR apps on a SaaS model. In my opinion, ASR is largely a solved problem. I don't want to charge for standing on the shoulders of giants. I'd rather put the weight on what makes Nucleate distinct: project history, privacy, and data ownership. If you share those values and want to support the studio, please consider donating.

Compatibility

Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon). 16GB RAM recommended. NVIDIA GPU with 8GB+ VRAM fully supported; AMD falls back to CPU-only local processing. Linux is not supported.

Compatibility cheat sheet

Performance

Built-in benchmarks on your hardware. On most modern setups, local processing costs far less than cloud.

Performance benchmarks

Full docs on the studio site

Setup, usage, and app docs live on the site — easier to keep current than duplicating everything here. Full product page

Donationware

Ad-free and fully functional. No subscriptions, no usage tokens, no hidden fees. This is a solo-developer effort. Donate only if you want to.

Future versions

License holders get all future versions and patches at no additional cost. Current release: v1.1.

Human art and AI assistance

I want to be clear about what I made. The animations, SVG art, and badges in Nucleate and on the product pages are all mine — made in Blender or Inkscape by hand. The chronicle widget is procedural and was built with AI assistance.

Contact

v1.2 - built solo - direct support from the developer

Questions? Bugs? Reach me below: Watchlight Studio

Watchlight Studio