RecordForge

A high-performance, local-first desktop screen recorder and lightweight proxy timeline editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Key Features • Architecture • Quick Start • Development • Contributing • License

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🌟 Highlights & Philosophy

RecordForge is built from the ground up to be recorder-first, privacy-focused, and low-end friendly:

• 🔒 100% Local-First & Private: No mandatory accounts, no cloud sync lock-in, and zero analytics/telemetry spyware. Your recordings never leave your machine unless you choose to export them.
• ⚡ Native Performance (Sub-50MB Idle RAM): Built on Tauri v2 and native Rust. No bloated Chromium background engines chewing up your CPU and battery.
• 🎯 Subpixel Cursor Telemetry (60Hz / 120Hz): Records raw cursor vectors alongside video. Preview and export with smooth spring-damping motion, click ripples, and automatic focal framing.
• 🎙️ Zero-Drift Audio Sync: Native low-latency audio capture isolates and synchronizes microphone and system audio streams with microsecond precision.
• ✂️ Non-Destructive Proxy Editor: Multi-track timeline supporting instant trims, cuts, splits, reordering, and unlimited undo/redo without waiting for slow intermediate re-renders.
• 🛡️ SQLite WAL Crash Recovery: Real-time state persistence safeguards against power loss, crashes, or unexpected reboots. Relaunch to restore your session seamlessly.
• 🚀 Hardware Acceleration: Out-of-the-box hardware encoding with NVIDIA NVENC, Apple VideoToolbox, Intel QuickSync, Linux VAAPI, and AMD AMF via pinned FFmpeg 9.0 sidecars.

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🏗️ Architecture

RecordForge enforces a strict separation between native systems engineering and declarative user interaction:

flowchart TD
    subgraph Frontend["React 19 Frontend"]
        F1["Vite • Tailwind v4 • Radix UI • Zustand • @recordforge/ui"]
    end

    subgraph Backend["Rust Backend (Tauri v2)"]
        B1["• Native Screen Capture (Windows Graphics Capture / DXGI)<br/>• Native Audio Pipeline (WASAPI Loopback + Device Clock)<br/>• SQLite WAL Metadata & State Engine<br/>• Cursor Rasterizer (resvg + tiny-skia)<br/>• Media Processing (FFmpeg / FFprobe Pinned Sidecars)"]
    end

    Frontend -->|"Tauri IPC Commands"| Backend
    Backend -->|"Tauri Events (Status / Progress)"| Frontend

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Monorepo Structure

recordForge/
├── apps/
│   ├── desktop/             # Tauri v2 desktop application (Rust + React)
│   └── marketing/           # Astro static marketing & documentation site
├── packages/
│   ├── config/              # Shared TypeScript, ESLint, Tailwind configs
│   ├── contracts/           # Zod schemas, IPC contracts, and DTOs
│   ├── cursor-core/         # Pure cursor telemetry normalization & smoothing
│   ├── cursor-engine/       # Native Rust cursor evaluation engine
│   ├── domain/              # Shared domain entities & state machines
│   ├── editor-core/         # Pure timeline command engine (split/trim/undo)
│   ├── media-core/          # FFmpeg render plan specifications & job queues
│   ├── overlay-core/        # TypeScript/WASM overlay engine adapter
│   ├── overlay-engine/      # Canonical Rust overlay evaluation engine
│   ├── storage-core/        # Storage providers & OS Credential Vault adapters
│   └── ui/                  # Shared component system (shadcn/Radix/Tailwind)
├── tooling/
│   ├── benchmarks/          # Editor & timeline performance benchmarks
│   ├── ffmpeg/              # Automated FFmpeg/FFprobe sidecar fetcher (pinned v9.0)
│   └── golden-fixtures/     # Canonical A/V & cursor golden test datasets
└── docs/                    # Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) & Specifications

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🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

1. Operating System: Windows 10/11, macOS 12+ (Apple Silicon or Intel), or Linux (Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 38+, Arch)
2. Runtime & Package Manager: Bun (>= v1.4.0) or Node.js (>= v22.15.0)
3. Rust Toolchain: Rustup (stable, >= 1.80) with target wasm32-unknown-unknown
4. Wasm Pack: cargo install wasm-pack (required for bun run build:wasm:overlay)
5. System Dependencies:
   • Windows: Visual Studio C++ Build Tools (with Windows SDK)
   • macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
   • Linux: WebKit2GTK, AppIndicator, and ALSA dev libraries (sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev libasound2-dev)

1. Clone & Install Dependencies

git clone https://github.com/jeandedieuH/recordForge.git
cd recordForge
bun install

2. Set Up FFmpeg Sidecars

Download and configure the pinned FFmpeg and FFprobe binary dependencies for your host OS/architecture:

bun run setup:ffmpeg

3. Build WASM Engines

bun run build:wasm:overlay

4. Run Development Server

Launch the full Tauri desktop application in live-reloading development mode:

cd apps/desktop
bun run tauri:dev

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🛠️ Development Workflow

Command	Description
bun run check	Run linter, formatting checks, typecheck, and test suites
bun run typecheck	Run TypeScript type checks across all workspaces
bun run test	Execute Vitest unit and integration test suites
bun run format:check	Verify codebase formatting with Prettier
bun run format	Auto-format all code files across the repository
cd apps/desktop && bun run tauri:build	Build production installer (.msi/.exe, .dmg, .deb)

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🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions from developers, designers, and creators of all skill levels!

1. Read our Contributing Guidelines to understand our codebase standards, architecture boundaries, and PR workflow.
2. Adhere to our Code of Conduct.
3. Check open Issues or join discussions to propose new features.

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🔒 Security & Privacy

For security vulnerability disclosures, please review our Security Policy.

RecordForge strictly complies with local-first security boundaries:

• Cloud credentials and API keys are stored exclusively in the OS Credential Vault (Windows Credential Manager, macOS Keychain, Linux Secret Service), never in plaintext or SQLite.
• Desktop capabilities are locked down via narrow Tauri security permissions.
• Telemetry, screen content, and transcripts are never logged or transmitted.

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📜 License

RecordForge is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0-or-later). See the LICENSE file for details.

Copyright (C) 2024-present Prestige Tech & RecordForge Contributors