Pepys
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Podcast transcription, with show notes built in

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How do you transcribe episodes?

To transcribe a podcast, upload the episode audio or paste its link and Pepys returns a speaker-labeled transcript in minutes – plus AI-generated show notes, key topics, and pull-quotes. It's pay-as-you-go with no subscription, and credits never expire.

Made for podcasters

Every published episode is also a pile of unwritten work – the show notes, the timestamped chapters, the pull-quotes for social, the description that helps people find you. It's all sitting in the audio you already recorded; it just needs to become text.

Most hosts still do it the slow way: scrub the recording, retype quotes by hand, guess at where the chapters go. A clean podcast transcript turns that into editing. You search the episode for the line a guest actually said, lift it word-for-word for the show notes, drop timestamped chapters straight into Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and publish the episode page the same day – without a monthly seat you only touch a few times a month.

  • Show notes & descriptions

    A drafted summary and notes pulled straight from the episode, ready to paste into Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

  • Timestamped chapters

    Jump-to markers so listeners can skim to the part they came for.

  • Pull-quotes & audiograms

    The most quotable lines surfaced for you, ready to cut into social clips.

  • A searchable transcript page

    An SEO-indexed transcript for every episode, hosted on your own site.

Built in, not bolted on

Show notes, topics, and pull-quotes – drafted for you

Every episodeis analyzed automatically the moment it’s transcribed. Here’s a real sample, run through it.

built-to-ship-ep-58.mp3AI analysis, built in
AI analysis

Ship the Small One: A Solo Dev on Finishing a Game That Reached a Million Players

Indie developer Sofia Marsh spent four years building a hit game alone – after abandoning three others. Her core lesson is counterintuitive: the projects she lost all failed by growing, and the one she shipped survived because she halved its scope twice. Marsh explains the ten-minute test she uses to decide which features live or die, why she treats solo development as a scheduled job rather than a passion project to outlast burnout, and why the finishable version of any idea is hiding inside the ambitious one.

Guests

Sofia Marsh – solo indie game developer; shipped a game that crossed one million playersHost – host of the Built to Ship podcast

Key topics

Why shrinking scope is what actually ships productsThe discipline of deleting your own ideasThe ten-minute test for which features surviveSchedule over passion as the antidote to burnoutFinishing the small version before the ambitious one

Pull-quotes

  • The hardest skill in solo development isn't coding – it's deleting your own ideas.
  • Does the player feel this in the first ten minutes?
  • I treated it like a job with hours, not a passion I bled for.
  • A schedule shows up on the bad days.
  • The game you can actually finish is hiding inside the game you wish you could make.

Show notes

  • Sofia's track record: three abandoned games before the one that crossed a million players
  • The core pattern – every project she lost failed by growing; the one she shipped had its scope halved twice
  • The cut test – “does the player feel this in the first ten minutes?” – and the crafting system she deleted because nobody would miss it
  • Beating burnout by treating solo dev as a scheduled job, not a passion project, and shipping on low-motivation days
  • Closing advice: halve the scope twice and ship the small version first; build the ambitious one second

Clean, speaker-labeled, click-to-seek

0:00 / 2:03

Ask, don’t scrub

Ask the transcript anything.

An hour-long recording? Don’t skim it – ask. Every answer stays grounded in your transcript and cites the exact timestamp, so you can jump to the moment and check it yourself.

built-to-ship-ep-58.mp3Ask AI

What's her main advice for finishing a project?

Make it smaller. She cut the shipped game's scope in half, twice, and says the hardest skill in solo development isn't coding, it's deleting your own ideas. Her closer: the game you can actually finish is hiding inside the game you wish you could make.

Cited0:331:46

How did she avoid burning out over four years?

She treated it like a job with hours, not a passion she bled for – a schedule shows up on the bad days, so she shipped even when she didn't feel like it. She also ran a 'does the player feel this in the first ten minutes?' test to cut anything that didn't earn its keep.

Cited1:200:56
Ask anything about this transcript…

Grounded in your transcript – if the answer isn’t in the audio, it says so instead of guessing.

Who said what

Speaker labels that survive cross-talk

Automatic speaker diarization. Two people, four people, cross-talk and interruptions – interviews, panels, messy meetings. Pepys keeps each voice on its own line instead of blurring them into one, so you never rewind to figure out who was talking.

Reporter

So the festival nearly didn't happen this year–

Mara Okonkwo

–it almost didn't. We lost the venue three weeks out.

Reporter

Three weeks? How do you even start to–

Mara Okonkwo

You call everyone you know. The whole town pitched in.

Reporter

And that's how it ended up in the park.

Works with the platforms you live in.

Paste a link from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts – or drop in any audio or video file. We transcribe it once, then you export it however your workflow needs.

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Export to any format

  • TXT
  • Markdown
  • DOCX
  • PDF
  • SRT
  • VTT
  • JSON

Most useful for podcasters: Chapters · Show notes (DOCX) · SRT · VTT · TXT

Timestamps, speaker labels, and subtitle timing carry through to every export.

How podcast transcription works

Upload or paste a link

Drop your episode or paste its link – any audio or video, in any language.

Get your transcript

A clean, speaker-labeled transcript with AI notes tuned to your format, ready in minutes.

Edit and export

Fix anything inline, then export to SRT, VTT, TXT, DOCX, PDF, or JSON.

Why podcasters pick Pepys

  • No subscription – pay per episode, and credits never expire.

  • Show notes are built in, not a separate copy-paste into ChatGPT.

  • Paste your RSS, YouTube, or Spotify link – no downloading files first.

  • Speaker labels keep host and guest from blurring together.

What podcasters say

  • drop the episode in and the show notes + pull-quotes come back done. what used to eat a whole evening is now basically a coffee break.
    Adam M.Adam M.Podcast producer · X
  • captions, chapters AND a hook breakdown straight off the upload. i pull 3 shorts out of every long video now. huge.
    Daniel K.Daniel K.YouTube creator · Product Hunt
  • I transcribe in the original language and receive a translated version with the subtitles still intact. It saved an entire round of contractor work on my last film. Thank you for building this.
    Giulia F.Documentary filmmaker · email

Podcast transcription – questions, answered

How do I transcribe a podcast episode?

Paste the episode's link (YouTube, Spotify, or a direct audio URL) or upload the file. Pepys returns a speaker-labeled transcript in minutes, along with AI-drafted show notes, key topics, and pull-quotes.

Can it tell the host and guests apart?

Yes. Speaker diarization separates each voice, so a two- or three-person episode comes back labeled rather than as one block of text. You can rename “Speaker 1” to the guest's name and it updates everywhere.

Does it generate show notes and chapters automatically?

Yes. The podcast analysis drafts a summary, key topics, pull-quotes, and show notes from the transcript, and timestamps let you export chapters for Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

What can I export for an episode?

Plain text, a DOCX of the show notes, SRT and VTT captions, and timestamped chapters. One click each.

How accurate is it with crosstalk and accents?

It auto-detects the spoken language across 99+ languages and handles overlapping speech and a range of accents. Anything it gets wrong you can fix inline in the editor.

Do I have to subscribe?

No. Pepys is pay-as-you-go – buy a block of hours, use them whenever, and the credits never expire. You can start free with 60 minutes, no card.

More industries

Turn your next episode into a transcript, show notes, and clips – and pay only for that episode.

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