Video compressor
- ID
- 22210
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 08 Sep 2026, 2:29 AM
- Fetched
- 08 Sep 2026, 6:28 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/7/video-compressor/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 08 Sep 2026, 6:29 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_users
What happened
Simon Willison used Claude Fable 5.1 in Claude Code for web to build a browser-based video compressor tool powered by the WebAssembly build of FFmpeg, so he could optimize a phone-recorded demo video before publishing it on his blog.
Why it matters
This is a concrete example of using an AI coding agent to ship a practical client-side tool in minutes — the WASM FFmpeg approach means video compression runs entirely in the browser with no server cost, which is directly relevant if you build media-handling web apps or want to test how far vibe-coding workflows can go for small utilities.
Discussion angle
How practical is the WASM FFmpeg route for production video processing in Malaysian bandwidth conditions, and does the AI-generated tool approach hold up for anything beyond one-off personal utilities?