Show IH: I shipped a private AI transcription app for Mac while working full-time as a laser physicist

I spend my days aligning laser beams. I shipped Thoth on the side because I got tired of meeting notes apps uploading my audio to a server.

What it does Thoth is a native macOS app that transcribes and summarizes entirely on-device. WhisperKit for transcription, local LLM (Mistral/Gemma) for summaries. No cloud, no account, no bot joining your calls. For users who want cloud AI, it sends the transcript directly to their provider of choice using their own API key, no proxy in between.

The build Solo dev, SwiftUI/AppKit, 5 Whisper model sizes, speaker diarization, system audio capture without a virtual driver.

App Store journey 5 rejections before approval on March 30th. Issues ranged from China compliance to mic permission wording to loading bugs. Each rejection was a week of waiting.

Numbers after ~1 month

• ~10 downloads

• 2 free trials active

• $0 revenue

• No visible uninstalls

What's working Organic ASO. Ranking #2 in DE and FR for "private ai scribe", #5 in US. No marketing budget, just metadata.

What's not working Press outreach. 5 emails sent, zero replies so far.

Happy to answer questions on the technical stack, App Store navigation, or on-device AI on Apple Silicon.