Case study
Reel-to-Knowledge
I wanted to close the loop between “I watched an Instagram Reel” and “I lost it forever.”
How it works
Share an Instagram Reel from my phone or through a Telegram bot
A background process on my Mac downloads the video
The audio is transcribed automatically
Once that transcript is ready, one AI pass reads the video, the transcript, and the caption together, and writes a summary, a one-line hook, a category, tags, and any action items
The summary, tags, and action items all land in Notion across three linked databases: a knowledge base, a task list, and weekly reviews
A reel that implies a task creates one automatically
A weekly review resurfaces that week's saves by category
What was actually broken
There was zero infrastructure after the save.
Useful reels, article links, book recommendations, podcast clips, quotes, ideas I wanted to try, went into what I started calling 'the pit.' I'd save something with every intention of following through, and it would just sit there, lost the moment I saved it. The content itself was never the problem.
What I tried, and got wrong
If saving something takes more than a second of thought, I don't do it.
There wasn't one clean failed attempt so much as a lot of refining to get the capture flow, including a phone shortcut, to actually feel frictionless. Most of the early iteration was just sanding that step down.
What it does now
A system that closes the loop between seeing a Reel and actually retaining what was in it.
From a single tap on my phone to a searchable, categorized Notion entry with any real tasks already created, no manual filing.
What changed
The real payoff is a weekly automated review that surfaces action items from reels I'd have otherwise never revisited.
Saving something now takes almost no friction. Articles I saved weeks ago and completely forgot about.