Nutshell
Co-founder briefing · founder → CTO

A working product —
and an invitation to
own its engineering.

Nutshell turns anything into one self-contained file that explains itself out loud. It already works. This is the map of what to build next — and a real seat at the table.

▶  Hear Nutshell explain itself — live demo ↗
Nutshell shell — a narrated diagram lighting up
one diagram · one voice · one shareable file
Prepared for Mykhailo Polazhynets June 2026 · founder-to-CTO
The 10-second version

Any diagram, doc, plan, or YouTube video becomes one file that explains itself out loud.

A spoken, chaptered walkthrough — the diagram lights up as it talks, and a transcript reads along, sentence by sentence.

  • Open anywhere. No app, no account, no internet — a single HTML file.
  • Share like a link. Send it; it plays itself on the other end.
  • Consume like a podcast — but you never lose the picture.
Try the live demo ↗
Nutshell shell — a diagram narrating itself with a synced caption
NutshellThe opportunity
The killer slide · the empty slot

Everyone picks a side. Nobody does both.

Audio, no visuals
NotebookLM Audio · ElevenLabs GenFM · Wondercraft
✕loses the picture
Nutshell
labeled diagram + narration synced to its nodes + read-along transcript — in one shareable file
Visuals, no audio
Napkin · Mapify · Mermaid Chart · Eraser · Miro AI
✕loses the sound
"Both" — but broken
NotebookLM Cinematic ($250/mo) makes abstract animated footage — it can't render a real labeled flowchart.
Miro Talktrack needs a human to sit down and record themselves.

Honest read: the exact combo isn't demand-proven yet — adjacent signals are strong, and cheap validation is an early step.

NutshellThe opportunity
Who it's for

Four audiences — one sharp wedge.

Engineering & technical teamssharpest wedge
Explain systems, codebases, runbooks; async onboarding. Flowchart fidelity is the whole point — and diagram incumbents (Swimm, Eraser) have zero narration.
Founders, PMs & consultants
Turn plans and strategy docs into walkthroughs that land without a meeting.
Educators & course creators
Lectures and courses as navigable narrated links — NotebookLM's core demographic, but with the visual map it lacks.
Self-learners on YouTube & docs
"Paste a link → chaptered podcast with a map, in under a minute." The huge summarizer habit, with a better output format.
bonus channel · zero competition
AI agents emitting explanations as narrated pages — Nutshell already runs as a coding-agent skill + API.
NutshellThe opportunity
The product · the shell

Everything happens on one calm canvas.

The Nutshell shell — diagram canvas, a synced narration caption, and a global transport

The diagram is the interface. It pans and zooms, nodes light up as the narration plays, and the caption reads along underneath.

  • Nodes light up in sync with the narration
  • One global scrubber across the whole walkthrough
  • Floating chrome — Library, New, queue — stays out of the way
menu-bar mini · ⌥⌘E Chat · ask any run
NutshellThe product, live
Every surface · the whole app

One design language, across every screen.

Library — generation queue and history
Libraryqueue + history
New walkthrough — paste a source
Newpaste a source
Chat — ask about this run
Chatask about a run
Settings — engine and plugins
Settingsengine & plugins
Command palette
Command palette⌘K anything
Menu-bar mini — capture and narrate
Menu-bar minicapture anywhere
NutshellThe product, live
Try it yourself · don't take my word for it

Three things you can open right now.

Shell working prototype v3 — interactive
Open the working shell ↗
Shell — Working Prototype v3. Drag the canvas, play a chapter, watch nodes light up.
Menu-bar mini — capture & narrate
 Open the menu-bar mini ↗
Capture & Narrate. The launcher: paste a source, two taps to a walkthrough.
▶ hosted demo Or hear Nutshell explain itself, baked and narrated — nutshell-demo.pages.dev/demo ↗
NutshellThe product, live
Cross-platform · iOS

The same player, in your pocket.

One column instead of three — diagram on top, a chapter chip rail, the read-along transcript, and a docked transport. Same tokens, same components.

  • ✓
    iPhone playback verified over the private network
  • ✓
    Lock-screen transport — play / pause / seek from anywhere
  • Nodes stay tappable to seek, even at phone scale
proves the design language is cross-platform
iPhone Player — chapter one
first chapter
iPhone Player — later chapter
mid-run · re-lit
NutshellThe product, live
How it works · architecture

One flow, source → self-contained page.

source MermaidYouTubeplannotes →
01detectwhat is this?
→
02ingestpull captions
→
03curateLLM writes diagram + script
→
04renderdiagram → SVG
→
05synthesizeon-device TTS · ~93% of bake
→
06encodecompress audio
→
07assemblebase64 → one .html
~20–60s end-to-end A live progress checklist ticks through these stages as it runs. TTS is most of the wait — hold that thought for Rock B.
NutshellProof it's real
Built & verified · inheritable

All green — and it's yours to take over.

206
Python unit tests
38
browser e2e (Playwright)
149
design-system (NutshellKit)
72
macOS app tests
Stack
  • Python 3.12 engine (Flask)
  • Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS player
  • On-device ONNX TTS
  • Swift / SwiftUI + Swift design-system package
Docs
  • A reviewer reading-order already exists
  • One structured metadata file as the source of truth
  • Index → Architecture → Launch → Pipeline
Discipline
  • ✓
    Structured log prefixes
  • ✓
    A test-quality gate
  • ✓
    Every milestone mirrored in metadata
NutshellProof it's real
What to build · current priorities

Two big rocks. Everything else sequences behind.

A priority
Make it look as good as the design. Close the gap between the cloud design and the shipped app — and build the snapshot gates that prove it. Four screens still need a golden + content gate.
B priority
Make narration fast. ~17s is the floor on this hardware. Run a model bake-off, ship hybrid routing (on-device by default, cloud for speed) — which doubles as a paid lever.
sequenced behind Off-Mini productionization · multi-tenancy · iOS · billing — all real, all later. Rocks A and B come first.

These are the priorities as I see them today — not a fixed schedule. Sequencing them is exactly the kind of call I'd want a co-founder's judgment on.

NutshellWhat to build
The deal · partnership

A real seat — with a clean exit either way.

1
Paid trial at a friendly rate.
A few weeks to a month — full technical ownership from day one.
↓  if it clicks
2
Co-founder equity package.
A real seat — engine, app, infra, roadmap.
↓  if it doesn't
3
Clean break.
Paid hourly for exactly what you built. No loose ends.

You can see exactly what to build — and there's real ownership in building it.

▶  The live demo ↗
Let's do a paid trial sprint — and see how we work together.
NutshellCo-founder briefing · Mykhailo Polazhynets