Can Shotomatic be vibe coded?
Automated Mac screenshots, website batches, guides, and local exports
A personal timed screenshot loop is a realistic contained build. Matching reliable capture across Mac apps, permission recovery, website batches, guide editing, and polished exports is a much larger product.
Jump to the build brief ↓Checked Jul 2026
What you pay today, before any DIY hosting
high editorial confidence
Buildability by layer
Screens, forms, and focused interactions
The repeatable job the product performs
Availability and legality of required data
Uptime, queues, support, and maintenance
Security, compliance, and user confidence
The achievable core
- Pick a display or window, capture it on an interval, keep the session local, and export the ordered images.
- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
The parts a prompt cannot buy
- polished display, window, and custom-area selection
- reliable macOS permission setup and recovery
- Action Capture guide editing and annotations
- batch website capture with per-URL settings
- The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.
Why people still pay
They want repeatable capture across Mac apps without maintaining native permission handling, automation edge cases, session history, and several export pipelines themselves.
The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.
The brief
Context, requirements, acceptance criteria, non-goals, and the full production standard — as Markdown, ready for any coding agent.
Build brief — a focused alternative to Shotomatic
Context
**Shotomatic** — Automated Mac screenshots, website batches, guides, and local exports. It currently costs $7.99/mo.
A personal timed screenshot loop is a realistic contained build. Matching reliable capture across Mac apps, permission recovery, website batches, guide editing, and polished exports is a much larger product.
This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Shotomatic that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.
What you are building
Pick a display or window, capture it on an interval, keep the session local, and export the ordered images.
Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
Requirements
Functional
MacOS 14 or later.
Xcode command line tools.
Screen Recording permission.
Data and integrations
Accessibility permission for optional keypress automation.
Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code.
Non-functional
Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.
Implementation brief
Build me a local macOS screenshot automation app covering Shotomatic's basic loop.
Requirements:
Use SwiftUI and ScreenCaptureKit in a native macOS 14+ app with no third-party packages.
Provide a source picker for one display or one visible window, with thumbnail previews.
Let me set an interval in seconds and stop after a screenshot count or elapsed duration.
Show a three-second countdown, live running status, captured count, and a clear Stop button.
Save every capture as PNG or JPEG in ~/Pictures/Capture Sessions/<timestamp>/.
Keep a local session list with thumbnails; open a session in Finder or delete it with confirmation.
Add one optional keypress after each capture using CGEvent so paged content can advance.
Check Screen Recording and Accessibility permission before starting; explain how to grant each.
Never upload files, add accounts, or collect telemetry. The app must work fully offline.
Handle a display or window disappearing mid-session without losing images already captured.
Include a small unit-tested state machine for idle, countdown, running, stopping, and failed states.
Include a README with build, permission, and signing notes plus a manual smoke-test checklist.
Out of scope: custom-area capture, website batches, guide editing, annotations, PDF/ZIP/MP4 export.
Produce an Xcode project that builds and runs, then run the unit tests before finishing.
Delivery standard
Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.
Acceptance criteria
A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.
Non-goals
Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:
Polished display, window, and custom-area selection.
Reliable macOS permission setup and recovery.
Action Capture guide editing and annotations.
Batch website capture with per-URL settings.
The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.
What you still own after launch
Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits.
Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
Risk
**Manageable.** A personal version is realistic if you test the critical journey and keep reliable backups.
Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.
Prior art
Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:
[Flameshot](https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot) — mature cross-platform screenshot capture, but not a timed Mac automation workflow
Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/shotomatic
You still own the product
- Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits.
- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.
Open-source prior art
Before you start
Can Shotomatic be vibe coded?
Partly, if you narrow it. A personal timed screenshot loop is a realistic contained build. Matching reliable capture across Mac apps, permission recovery, website batches, guide editing, and polished exports is a much larger product.
What can an AI coding agent reproduce from Shotomatic?
Pick a display or window, capture it on an interval, keep the session local, and export the ordered images. Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export. A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.
What will a DIY Shotomatic replacement still be missing?
polished display, window, and custom-area selection; reliable macOS permission setup and recovery; Action Capture guide editing and annotations; batch website capture with per-URL settings; The last 20 percent is sync, migration fidelity, speed, and edge cases.
What do I still own after building a Shotomatic alternative?
Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits. Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates. Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change. Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.