FAQ
Questions people actually ask
Every limit below is the one the server enforces, and every command is one you can paste. Where the answer is no, it says no.
What it is
- What does QuickPeek actually do?
- You give it the URL of a web app and it returns a finished demo video. It opens a real browser with Playwright, works out what on the page is interactive, walks through it, narrates what it is doing in any of 60+ languages, burns karaoke captions into the frames and renders an MP4. A run takes about two minutes and needs nobody at the keyboard.
- Is QuickPeek a screen recorder?
- No, and that is the whole point of it. Every other tool in this category hands you a recorder: you open your own product, click through it yourself, and the tool saves what you did. QuickPeek is handed a URL and does the clicking. There is a capture mode if you want to perform a flow by hand, for example something the planner cannot reach on its own, but it is the exception rather than how you normally use it.
- What do I get out of a run?
- An MP4 with the narration and captions already in it, plus an editable plan.json describing every step. The video lands inside the project you pointed it at, not in a cloud library, and the plan file is the thing you edit and re-run if a step is wrong.
- What happens to the demo when my UI changes?
- Re-run the same command. Because a QuickPeek demo is a command plus a plan.json file rather than a saved recording, it rebuilds itself against the UI that shipped. That is the practical difference from a recorder: nobody has to perform the walkthrough a second time, so re-cutting the demo on every release is cheap enough to actually do.
Getting started
- How do I try it?
- Run npx @spark-apps/quickpeek https://your-app.com in a terminal. There is nothing to install first and no card. The command line asks for an email on the first run because the AI planner is metered per address, and that confirmation link does need clicking before the first video. Over MCP there is no account at all.
- What do I need installed?
- Node, ffmpeg, and a Chromium that Playwright can drive. QuickPeek uses the browser Playwright bundles if it is already on the machine and falls back to your installed Google Chrome if it is not. If neither is there it stops and tells you to run npx playwright install chromium, which is a one-off download of a few hundred megabytes. Earlier versions did not say this and simply failed, so make sure you are on 1.2.6 or later.
- Do I need an API key?
- No. The AI runs through the QuickPeek hosted relay, so there is no key to get and nothing to paste into a config file. Older copies of the README mentioned a Groq key; that has not been true for a long time and there is no longer any code that reads one.
- Does it work on localhost?
- Yes. A local development URL is the normal case, and it is the one a recorder handles worst because you have to be there to drive it. What QuickPeek cannot point at is something that is not a web page at all: a desktop application, a native mobile app, or a flow sitting behind multi-step SSO with an authenticator app.
Price and limits
- Is there a free tier, and what are the real limits?
- Yes, and no card. Five videos over MCP with no account at all, and 10 videos a day from the command line once you confirm a free address. The CLI planner runs on our servers, so the CLI does need that confirmation link clicked before the first video; MCP does not, because your own model does the planning. Over the CLI and MCP there is no length cap: a free video of 20 seconds or under comes out clean, and only a longer free video carries a QuickPeek watermark. On the hosted web recorder at quickpeek.co free videos are capped at 20 seconds and are always watermarked.
- What do the paid plans cost?
- Essentials is $12 a month and Elite is $29 a month. Both are flat for the whole account rather than per seat, so a second person making demos does not change the bill. Essentials removes the watermark and the 20 second web cut and allows 100 videos a day; Elite allows 300 a day and 150 AI auto-cuts.
- Is QuickPeek billed per seat?
- No. Most tools in this category are, at $18 to $50 per user a month, which is the number that decides the comparison once more than one person wants to make a demo. QuickPeek is flat per account at both paid tiers.
MCP and automation
- Can an AI assistant make the video for me?
- Yes, that is what the MCP server is for. Run claude mcp add quickpeek -- npx -y --ignore-scripts --package=@spark-apps/quickpeek quickpeek-mcp and then ask for a demo in plain language. The registry id is co.quickpeek/quickpeek, and the first five videos over MCP need no account at all, because on that path the calling model writes the plan and the narration itself.
- Can I run it in CI?
- Yes. It is a command line tool, so a job can rebuild the demo on every release and commit the MP4 or upload it wherever the video lives. That is the case a recorder cannot serve at any price, because a recorder needs a human to perform the walkthrough.
- Is the source open?
- No, the repository is private. The npm package is public, so you can read exactly what runs on your machine by unpacking it, and support@quickpeek.co answers questions that the docs do not.
Make one and see
Point it at a URL, including localhost. No card.
npx @spark-apps/quickpeek https://your-app.com