I DESIGN

Aleksei Kipin sitting on a textured sofa, looking at his phone.
A woman talking on a video call from her laptop at home.

Pet project

Stage

Record your screen, camera, audio, cursor, and keystrokes in sync, then quickly turn it into a polished product demo with subtitles and simple edits.

A woman talking on a video call from her laptop at home.

Stage

Record your screen, camera, audio, cursor, and keystrokes in sync, then quickly turn it into a polished product demo with subtitles and simple edits.

After building Figma plugins, mobile apps, and web services, I wanted to try something new: a macOS app. Stage grew out of a personal need—I record product demos almost daily and couldn’t find a tool that fit my workflow, so I built one.

Creating a polished product demo often means choosing between complex, cumbersome tools and simple screen recorders that don’t offer enough control. Stage fills that gap with powerful recording and editing features that don’t require video editing experience.

  • Too limited

    FinderFileEditViewGoWindowHelpTue Oct 6 9:41 AM1240 × 780OptionsRecord
  • Stage

  • Too complex

    SnappingDefaultReviewLearningStandardSmall ScreenLibrariesProjectEffect ControlsMain Comp ▾1920 × 1080 (1.00)Δ 0;00;10;00, 29.97 fpsNameTypeSizeFrame R…Main CompCompositionLogo RevealCompositionLower ThirdCompositionFootageFolderinterview_A.movQuickTime2.4 GBinterview_B.movQuickTime1.9 GBbroll_city.mp4MPEG812 MBAudioFoldermusic_bed.wavWAV48 MBvo_take_03.wavWAV22 MBSolidsFolderDark Gray Solid 1SolidPrecompsFolder8 bpcComposition Main CompLayer (none)Footage (none)Main Comp ‹ Logo RevealLAUNCHSpring 2026 · Now in beta50%0;00;02;14FullActive Camera1 View+0.0InfoAudioR : 214G : 220B : 236A : 255X : 1012Y : 488PreviewShortcutSpacebarInclude:Frame Rate (29.97)Effects & PresetsLibraries* Animation Presets3D ChannelAudioBlur & SharpenChannelColor CorrectionCharacterParagraphAlignHelvetica NeueBoldT 72 pxA AutoVA MetricsVA 02 pxMain CompLogo RevealRender Queue0;00;00;000;00;01;070;00;02;140;00;03;210;00;04;280;00;05;050;00;06;120;00;07;190;00;08;260;00;09;0300074 (29.97 fps)00s01s02s03s04s05s06s07s08s09s#Layer NameModeTTrkMatParent & Link1LogoNormalNone◎ NoneTransformResetAnchor Point960.0,540.0Position1012.5,488.0Scale104.0,104.0%Rotation0x+12.0°Opacity100%2TaglineNormalNone◎ None3Shape Layer 1NormalNone◎ None4Light LeakScreenNone◎ None5Camera 1NormalNone◎ None6Adjustment LayerNormalNone◎ None7interview_A.movNormalNone◎ None8music_bed.wavNormalNone◎ NoneFrame Render Time 14msToggle Switches / ModesLaunch film.aep

Crafted down to the last detail

Speed up a walkthrough and you still sound like yourself. Maintain Audio Pitch keeps voices natural at any speed, and it’s on from the start.

Shrink the video and its corners round on their own, with a soft shadow to match. Bring it back to full size and they’re square again.

Your pointer is recorded as data, not burned into the pixels. One click on Hide takes it out of the whole video, and Dark brings it right back.

Turn the arrow into a circle or a hand and make it up to three times bigger. It’s redrawn as a vector shape, so it stays sharp at any size.

Captions own the bottom center. Turn them on and a keystroke badge parked there steps aside to the corner, and the spot stays theirs while they’re on. One Undo puts both back.

Turn on Click waves and every click sends out three soft rings, so viewers never miss what you pressed. They stay pinned to the spot and keep pace with the playback speed.

Zooms land right on your pointer and travel in a straight line, without a wobble. While zoomed in, the view holds still until the pointer strays, then glides to keep it in frame.

Webcam corners stay in proportion as you resize it, from gently rounded to a perfect circle. Switch to a rectangle and the same setting makes a capsule.

Hide any kind of block, from zooms and webcam moves to text, pencil, blur and images, to clear the timeline. The rest grow to fill the space, and hidden blocks still play and export.

The playhead’s handle widens as you reach for it, and a preview of the frame rides above your pointer as you scan the timeline.

AI-first design and development

While building Stage with Codex and Claude, I set up automated workflows for key development events. Agents deploy new versions, maintain release notes, keep track of important design decisions, and update legal documents.

Ships new versions

Builds, notarizes and publishes each release.

stage 1.5.1 · live 09:17

Writes release notes

Drafts the notes for every release as it ships.

release-1.5.1.md · drafted

Logs design decisions

Records what changed and why, as it happens.

webcam: circle → capsule

Updates legal documents

Keeps the privacy policy and terms current.

privacy › analytics · 09:14

Data-driven

Stage is still in active development. I collect early feedback through support email, Product Hunt, Google Analytics, PostHog and Cloudflare, and plan next steps accordingly.

  • Cloudflare · 30 days

    20.6k

    Pageviews, bots included

  • Google Analytics · this year

    59%

    Engaged sessions

  • Release notes · since 1.0

    9

    Updates shipped since launch

  • PostHog · so far

    0

    Opted-in

Plus every email to support@usestage.app and every comment on Product Hunt.

A jungle island with a glowing glass orb, turning slowly in the dark.

Pet projects

Figma plugins

Eight Figma plugins, about 34k users. My three favorites: render 3D models, highlight text with plain English or regex, and trace images into vectors.

A jungle island with a glowing glass orb, turning slowly in the dark.

Figma plugins

Eight Figma plugins, about 34k users. My three favorites: render 3D models, highlight text with plain English or regex, and trace images into vectors.

I’ve been publishing Figma plugins since 2020, when the first version of Text Highlighter went live. Eight of them are on Figma Community today, with about 34,000 users between them.

Here are my three favorites: a 3D renderer, a text highlighter that understands plain English, and an image tracer. Each one is free and works inside Figma, so designers never have to leave it.

Depth

I started Depth while designing a product page built around 3D renders. Testing an idea meant leaving Figma for Blender, so I put a renderer in a plugin: load a model, light it, and place the render on the canvas at up to 4x.

Open on Figma Community
  • Figma Community · Oct 9

    532

    Users

  • Version history · 2025–26

    18

    Versions since September 2025

  • Awards · 2026

    6

    Design awards for Depth and its site

  • Help · Formats

    7

    3D formats, plus ZIP packages

Text Highlighter

I was working on a data logging system and needed to show how the logger highlights different data points in long logs. Instead of coloring them by hand, I built a plugin to do it: describe what to highlight in plain English, or type a regex. Years later, thousands of designers find it useful too.

Open on Figma Community
  • Figma Community · Oct 9

    13.6k

    Users

  • Figma Community · Oct 9

    71

    Likes

  • Version history · 2020–26

    12

    Versions over six years

  • Manifest · editors

    2

    Editors: Figma and FigJam

Image Trace

Select an image and trace it into editable vectors. The VTracer engine runs on your own machine as WebAssembly, so there are no API keys, no tokens and no network access.

Open on Figma Community
  • Figma Community · Oct 9

    2.8k

    Users

  • Figma Community · Oct 9

    70

    Likes

  • Git · Sep 2025

    25h

    From first commit to release

  • Manifest · network

    0

    API keys, tokens or network requests

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