Hi!
I'm Steve. Even though I spent 30 years in tech (Apple in the Jobs era, then Cisco and Salesforce among a bunch of startups) I never wrote production code. Last spring I built a Mac teleprompter in 3 days by pair-programming with AI, named it after my granddaughter, and it quietly found 500+ users, paying customers, and some working actors before I ever marketed it. It's evolved into something I'm strangely proud of, and now want to share it with everyone.
But here's my fear: there are at least seven Mac notch teleprompters now. Mine has a real differentiator (it tracks the actual words you say, not just scroll-on-sound and a free developer surface), but I know how "oh boy, another one of those" reads in a feed.
Tellie
I hate teleprompters.
Not the idea. The experience.
They make you follow them. Pause and it keeps scrolling. Go off-script and you’re suddenly lost on a screen. Worst of all, you end up sounding like you’re reading instead of speaking from the heart.
I thought, why can’t the prompter follow you?
So I built Tellie.
People don't want to read a script, they want to tell a story. They skip sentences. Rearrange things. Go off script. Say the same idea in completely different words.
Tellie listens (on-device) to the actual words you’re saying and follows you. Pause, skip, ad-lib, say it your way. Tellie keeps up. With 1.5's new Stagehand feature, it now understands what you’re trying to accomplish, even when you use your own words.
Tellie can tell you:
You’re missing an important point
You’re running long
You covered the things you needed to cover
You finished the take but skipped something
You went off script… and that’s probably okay
Every teleprompter answers one question: where am I in the script? Tellie answers it by following the words you actually speak, and knows what you still need to say. That's why I call it an unprompter.
It's only 3 MB. Completely local. Your voice never leaves your Mac. Invisible to Zoom and screen recorders.
Tellie 1.5 is $19 today with code PRODHUNT10 (normally $29). One-time purchase, never a subscription. Each download comes with 10 days free.
If you make videos, pitch, teach, interview, or just need to sound like yourself instead of a script, try it.
And if you need a feature I haven’t thought of yet, tell me. That’s how most of the good stuff got built.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
Interesting. I would say that it is more for already experienced and know how to improvise. I remember when I started and completely relied on the text written on paper (yeah, back then I didn't have such cool technology) :D