I turned my webcam into a GIF factory — what I learned building GIF.new

Hi IH 👋

A few weeks ago, I had a random thought:

“Why are welcome emails still so... dry? What if they came with a GIF of me actually waving at the user?”

So naturally, I spiraled into a weekend project that turned into a full-on side thing:
🎉 GIF.new: a tool that lets you record a short webcam video, add text placeholders like Hey {{name}}, and generate personalised GIFs for welcome emails, shoutouts, or whatever else.

A few things I learned while building this:

• ffmpeg.wasm is magical and evil. It works in the browser but WILL destroy your soul if you forget to wrap it in a web worker 🙃

• Trimming a video in the browser sounds simple. It’s not. You end up needing to mess with MediaRecorder, blobs, and timestamps like a video surgeon.

• Getting text overlays to dynamically update for things like names or Twitter handles? Also a rabbit hole.

• Creating an API for it all sounds like a nice-to-have… until you realise it unlocks some seriously cool use cases (more on that below 👇)

Where I landed:

• Homepage: record + convert to GIF (everything happens locally)

• Logged-in dashboard: upload to cloud, trim, generate, repeat

• API: pass a templateId + a { name: "Rob" } object → get back a custom GIF

• Free tier: 100 GIFs, Paid tier: 3,000 GIFs/month for $3.99

Why this exists:

I just wanted to make user comms feel more like a wave from a human and less like an automated shrug.
If it helps even one person’s user experience feel more personal, that’s a win.

If you send welcome emails, shout out your users, or just like weird/fun ways to connect with your audience — I’d love for you to try it. Feedback, bug reports, “this broke my camera” warnings, all welcome 😅

Try it: GIF.new

Happy to answer any build or tech questions too!