Slate: The pre-production studio for solo YouTubers

Hey PH 👋 JC here, maker of Slate.

I started making YouTube videos back when I was as a teenager. My first channel (@PinWiiTV) hit 46k subs. Paused for college, came back a few years ago making videos for software engineers (@jcfontech), and ran into the same wall every solo creator hits.

Making a video isn't just filming and editing. There's so much invisible work behind the scenes: researching what's working in your niche, finding outliers worth studying, obsessing over titles and thumbnails that earn the click, writing scripts that actually hold attention, and somehow keeping your B-roll from turning into a chaotic mess.

Big channels hire teams for this. Solo creators struggle juggling dozens of tabs, multiple tools, messy google docs and custom Notion tracking/planning templates. Ai entered the picture been good at exactly the parts solo creators can't immediately afford to delegate.

So my co-founder Octavio and I built Slate. It's a pre-production studio that holds your strategy, research, script, thumbnails, and shot list in one place. Every project develops in the context of your channel (past videos, references, workflows you've refined).

A few things we are proud of:

→ Research + Ideation: Slate hunts for outliers in your niche and pulls them into your project, giving chat suggestions in what's actually working right now.
→ Co-op Script Editor: A space where you and Slate's AI can jam on scripts in real-time.
→ B-roll Annotations: YouTube scriptwriting is very different from writing a Medium article. Thinking about what's being shown at any given time is critical. Slate lets you tag and annotate your B-roll right next to your script paragraphs.
→ Smart Media Library: Link your Drive or Dropbox once and your footage becomes searchable based on what's in the clip. Slate will even suggest B-roll you've already shot when a new script needs it.
→ Skills: Turn your best prompts and frameworks into templates, or install setups from other successful creators.
→ Straight to your editor. After you record your video, Slate analyzes your A-roll or voiceover, strips silences and bad takes, syncs it with the script you wrote, and overlays planned B-roll. You get an FCP or Premiere timeline ready for the artistic pass, saving hours of the most tedious work.

🎁 For the PH community: We are giving 7 days of full access, no card required.

A few things we'd love to hear from other creators in the comments:

1. What's your current pre-production setup? Notion, Google Docs, a notes app? We'd love to understand what Slate would be replacing.
2. If you've already built a system that works, what would it take for you to switch? The migration friction is real and I we're still trying to solve it.
3. How much AI do you actually want in your workflow? We use it for the heavy lifting, but preserving the creator's voice is important to me. Where's the line for you?

Can't wait to hear your feedback!
- JC