Tellie / Press kit Press inquiries
Tellie Press · Updated September 2026

The Mac teleprompter that understands.

Say it your way. Tellie keeps up.

Tellie tracks the words you actually say, keeps up when you pause, skip or improvise, and recognizes when you've covered a point in your own words. Stagehand takes it further, keeping track of what you still need to cover.

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Free teleprompter · 10 days of Pro included · Pro $29 once · no subscription

It tracks what you said.
And what you didn't.

Tellie doesn't just follow your place in the script. It understands what you've covered, even when you put it in your own words.

The hook

There are actually three stories here.

The Mac story

A former Apple executive built his first Mac app without knowing how to code.

Steve Chazin spent more than thirty years building technology and was rehired personally by Steve Jobs in 1997 during Apple's turnaround. He never learned to code. He built Tellie anyway, with AI as his coding partner. He did not write the code. He knew what the product should do.

Read Steve's story →
The AI story

What happens when product judgment meets an AI coding partner?

Tellie became an experiment in what Steve calls the Digital RenAIssance: the idea that AI is removing the technical barrier between imagining software and building it. The surprising part was not that AI could write thousands of lines of Swift. It was what happened when the AI could not work out what the product should do next.

Read the Digital RenAIssance →
The product story

The feature AI couldn't imagine.

Tellie started as a teleprompter that follows your words. Then Steve wanted something different: a teleprompter that tracks what you still need to say. That became Stagehand.

Read how Stagehand happened →

If you only have a minute

Tellie's story in 30 seconds.

Steve Chazin is a former Apple executive who was rehired by Steve Jobs in 1997. Despite working in tech for thirty years, he never learned to code. Yet by using AI as his coding partner, Steve created an app while his granddaughter napped.

It started as a teleprompter. But ordinary teleprompters make you follow them. Tellie follows your words, not the other way around. It tracks the actual words you say and moves through your script accordingly. You can pause, skip, improvise, or go off script. Tellie waits.

Then Steve asked a different question: what if Tellie could tell you what you forgot to say?

That became Stagehand. Tellie can now track the important sections of a script, recognize when you have covered them in your own words, warn you when time is running short, and debrief you after the take.

The AI wrote the code. The human decided where the power should live.

That distinction is the story.

Stagehand

Now Tellie helps you say what you came to say.

Every teleprompter answers one question: where am I in the script? Tellie answers it by following your voice. Stagehand asks another one: what do I still need to say?

Mark the sections that matter and Tellie tracks them while you speak. You can ad-lib, change the wording, jump around, take a tangent. Stagehand still tracks what you have covered. If you are running out of time it can nudge you toward something important before it is too late, and afterward it can tell you what you actually covered.

This is not a chatbot bolted onto a teleprompter. The intelligence is in the script itself.

The feature arrived after Steve and his AI coding partner spent days building increasingly complicated interfaces that technically worked and made the product worse. The breakthrough was a product decision, not a technical one: do not add another interface, put the intelligence in the document.

Read the full story →

What it actually does

The Mac teleprompter that understands.

It doesn't just listen for your voice. It tracks the words you're actually using, understands when you've gone off script, and can recognize when you've covered an idea in your own words.

Voice Follow

Tellie tracks the actual words you say and advances the script as you speak. Not your volume. Not your speaking speed. Your words.

Go off script

Pause. Skip ahead. Ad-lib. Repeat yourself. Tellie waits until your words reconnect with the script.

Stagehand

Mark what matters. Tellie tracks those sections while you speak and helps make sure you cover them, in whatever words come out on the day.

Time awareness

Tellie uses your real speaking pace to tell you whether what is left will fit in the time you have.

Presenter Magic

Keynote speaker notes in the MacBook notch. The audience sees your slides. You see what comes next.

Take Coach Pro

After each take, a private debrief written on the Mac: your real pace, what you covered or skipped, and the one thing to sharpen next time.

Companion Pro

Your Mac stays the mic and the brain while a phone, tablet or laptop becomes the prompter, the remote or a private checklist, over your own Wi-Fi.

Invisible on calls

macOS excludes Tellie's window from screen capture, so Zoom, Teams, Meet and every recorder see what is behind it. The other person sees you, not your notes.

Private by design

Your voice never leaves your Mac.

Speech recognition runs locally. No cloud transcription, no speech API, no account, no sign-in, no telemetry. Your voice stays on your computer and so does your script.

That matters because of what people actually put in a prompter: auditions, sales calls, executive presentations, private meetings, customer conversations, unreleased scripts, personal notes. Tellie does not need your voice in the cloud in order to follow you.

Read the privacy page →

The Apple connection

From Steve Jobs to Tellie.

Steve Chazin was rehired personally by Steve Jobs in 1997 to help return Apple to profitability. One lesson stayed with him: technology should get out of the user's way.

Tellie is built around that idea. The script lives next to the camera. The prompter disappears from screen sharing. Speech recognition happens on the machine. The interface stays quiet while the software does the work. The goal is not to make the technology more visible. It is to make the person using it better.

The bigger idea

Tellie is one experiment in a much bigger idea.

For most of the history of computing, making software meant learning the language of machines: code, syntax, frameworks, compilers.

AI changes that equation. You can describe what you want, test it, reject what does not work, and keep going. Steve calls this the Digital RenAIssance. The claim is not that AI replaces human creativity. It is that AI lowers the technical barrier to expressing it. Tellie is what happens when that idea meets three decades of product experience.

Explore the Digital RenAIssance →

For different desks

Pick your story.

Mac / Apple

A former Apple executive applies decades of product philosophy to a new native Mac app.

AI

A non-programmer builds and ships a real Mac application with AI as his coding partner.

Product design

The most important breakthrough in Tellie was not generated code. It was a human decision about where the intelligence belonged.

Privacy

Voice-following speech recognition that never sends your voice to the cloud.

Creator tools

A teleprompter that follows creators instead of making creators follow it.

Acting and entertainment

Word-level tracking built for auditions, rehearsal and performance, including natural ad-libbing.

Presentations

A private presentation assistant that sits beside the camera and stays invisible to the audience.

Future of software

What happens when building software becomes available to people who do not know how to code?

Users

People use Tellie when they need to sound like themselves.

“Having a teleprompter that follows my speech instead of scrolling at a fixed speed is an absolute game changer.”
Jens NuessleActor, voice artist and live performer. Artistic director, Theaterspinnerei, Germany
“When I'm teaching, I'll frequently add stuff or comment, and Tellie is tolerant of my saying bunches of words that aren't the next line without advancing. The virtue of Tellie for me lies in my not having to control it.”
Conrad GempfLondon, England
“I just used Tellie on my first Casting Director Zoom workshop in 13 years.”
Andrew P.SAG-AFTRA actor, New York
“I tried ten teleprompter apps, Tellie is the only one that just works. Reliable voice tracking, automation through hotkeys, and best of all, I can send any text directly to the teleprompter with a single button press.”
Gabrian van HoudtFilmmaker
“It truly is a magnificent app.”
Sprague TheobaldTwo-time Emmy Award-winning writer, producer and actor
“With Tellie, I am able to have more confidence in my delivery when presenting to my team. I now make eye contact with everyone, and connect deeper with people. With Tellie, I finally speak less from my notes, and more from my heart.”
Erik C.Sales Development Manager, Arizona

About the creator

About Steve Chazin.

Use whichever fits your context. Click to copy.

Short · 1 line

Tellie was created by Steve Chazin, a former Apple product executive rehired personally by Steve Jobs in 1997, who later led teams at Cisco and Salesforce. He writes about practical AI at stevechazin.com under the banner AI for the Rest of Us.

Medium · 3-4 sentences

Steve Chazin spent over 30 years leading product and marketing strategy at Apple, Cisco, Salesforce, and Alarm.com. Re-hired directly by Steve Jobs in 1997 during Apple's turnaround, Steve later helped scale Cisco WebEx past $1B in ARR and designed Chatter Messenger at Salesforce. Today, he publishes the weekly newsletter Tomorrow, Explained and creates tools focused on AI for the Rest of Us, acting as a practical guide for everyday people navigating modern technology. Tellie is his first shipped Mac application, built using AI pair programming in 2026.

Long · for speaking + feature pieces

Steve Chazin spent more than 30 years leading product and marketing at Apple, Cisco, Salesforce, Alarm.com, and Symantec. At Apple, he was personally rehired by Steve Jobs in 1997 to help return the company to profitability. At Cisco, he helped grow WebEx from $900M to $1.3B in annual recurring revenue and helped create Cisco Spark. At Salesforce, he led the acquisition of Dimdim and designed Chatter Messenger, which predated Slack. He now runs Skytech.io, writes about AI for non-technical readers at stevechazin.com under the banner "AI for the Rest of Us," and hosts the podcast The Skytech Minute. His goal is to be the Bill Nye of AI: translating the technology clearly, without hype or doom, for everyday people. Tellie is his first shipped Mac app. He built its first working version in three days in May 2026, with Claude as his coding partner, during a visit to his granddaughter in Vermont, sneaking the work in while she napped or was at school. Tellie has shipped continuously since, adding Stagehand, Presenter Magic, Take Coach and Companion. The app is named after her. Her name is Ellie, and she's just learning how to read. He calls this moment the Digital RenAIssance: when the bottleneck to building software shifts from technical skill to imagination.

Assets

Everything you need.

No account, no form, no email required. Click any image to preview it larger, then download. Or right-click and save.

App icon · PNG · 1024×1024

Screenshots

All captured in Tellie 1.6.2 on macOS 26, September 2026. The document on screen is the sample script that ships with the press kit, so what the prompter says is what the picture shows.

The Tellie prompter hanging open from the MacBook notch, menu bar visible above it, Voice Follow live and the spoken word highlighted
The prompter in the notch, mid-take · PNG · 1450×788
Sixteen seconds of Voice Follow: the highlight follows the spoken words, waits through a pause, and catches up after a skip
Voice Follow in motion, 16 seconds · GIF · 900×382
A Zoom screen share in progress: Tellie is open in the notch, and the share preview at the bottom shows only the desktop, without the prompter
Invisible on a Zoom share (the preview has no prompter) · PNG · 2240×1600
The Take Coach drawer under the prompter after a take: time, words, pace, longest pause, a missed key phrase, and the one line of coaching
Take Coach: the after-take debrief · PNG · 1658×956
A Keynote slide filling the screen while that slide's speaker notes appear in the Tellie prompter in the notch
Presenter Magic: Keynote notes in the notch · PNG · 2560×1440
Tellie in the notch beside the Companion checklist view, showing sections checking off as they are said
Companion on the Mac: the checklist view · PNG · 2286×1627
The Companion prompter view on an iPhone, following the same take word for word over local Wi-Fi
Companion on an iPhone: the prompter view · PNG · 1206×2622
The Tellie menu open over the prompter: Open Document, Send to Tellie, Import from Clipboard, Pulse Log, Settings
The Tellie menu · PNG · 1344×1354
Tellie Settings, General pane: Voice Follow mode and language, and the Take Coach switch
Settings: General · PNG · 1440×1200

Stagehand

The part no other prompter does. In each of these the script on screen is explaining the feature being demonstrated, so the picture teaches itself.

The first must-cover section checked off in the chin as it is read, with the time left beside it
A section covered, tracked live · PNG · 1368×782
Tellie warning, by name, that a section ahead will not fit in the time left, with a Jump there button
The time warning, by name · PNG · 1538×922
The speaker off script for a moment: the highlight holds its place and the chin keeps counting
Off script, place held · PNG · 1556×834

Video

Tellie, on camera

Steve on camera and the prompter in the notch, in one take: Voice Follow keeping up through a pause and an ad-lib, invisibility on calls, Stagehand ticking points off in his own words, and the Take Coach page when he stops. Recorded September 2026 in Tellie 1.6.2.

MP4 MP4 · 12 MB · 2:41middot; 12 MB MP4 · 12 MB · 2:41middot; 2:41 · Download

Tellie, in one take

Steve reads the whole walkthrough from the notch: Voice Follow, invisibility on calls, Stagehand ticking points off in his own words, the time warning, and the Take Coach debrief when he stops. Recorded September 2026 in Tellie 1.6.2.

MP4 · 9.2 MB · 2:48 · Download

Presenter Magic

Keynote speaker notes in the notch while the audience sees only the slides.

MP4 · Download

Longer cuts for editing: product demo (25 MB), full walkthrough (44 MB), deep dive (71 MB).

Steve

Steve Chazin
Headshot · JPG · 940×824
Steve Chazin with his granddaughter
Alternate · JPG

At a glance

Fact sheet.

Product
Tellie (v1.6.2)
Category
The unprompter: a voice-aware Mac teleprompter and presentation co-pilot
Key innovation
Stagehand: script-driven obligation tracking and live time-budgeting (100% local logic, zero AI overhead)
Take Coach
Pro. After each take, a private debrief written on the Mac: your real pace, the points you covered or skipped, and one thing to sharpen next time. Findings only; nothing you say is stored.
Companion
Pro. Turns a phone, tablet or laptop into a console for the Mac over the user’s own Wi-Fi: a prompter view near any lens, a full remote, and a private checklist. The Mac stays the microphone and the brain.
Presenter Magic
Pro. Live Keynote speaker notes in the notch; with Voice Follow on, Tellie can advance the slide when you finish a slide’s notes.
Platform
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Apple silicon (M1 or later). Tellie does not run on Intel Macs.
Pricing
The teleprompter is free forever. Every install includes 10 days of Pro with no card, no account and nothing to cancel. Tellie Pro is $29 once, covers up to 3 Macs, includes every 1.x update, and has a 14-day refund.
Privacy first
Speech recognition and scripts are processed on the Mac. No account, no telemetry; voice and scripts are never sent to Tellie’s servers. Companion traffic stays on the user’s own Wi-Fi.
Footprint
About 4 MB, notarized and stapled through Apple’s notarization service; updates via Sparkle
Language support
40+ languages and regional variants with on-device speech matching
Call protection
Excluded from screen capture by default, so Zoom, Teams, Meet and screen recorders see what is behind it. A per-session recordable mode exists for demos and resets on quit.
File formats
Plain text, Markdown, RTF, Microsoft Word (.docx), PDF, and Apple Pages
Developer API
tellie:// deep links, @tellie/cli and @tellie/mcp on npm, live status lines in the notch from any tool or agent, and a private 30-day Pulse Log (Pro)
Creator
Steve Chazin (former Apple, Cisco, and Salesforce executive)
First release
May 2026; public launch July 2026
Traction
As of September 19, 2026: 4,500+ downloads since the bot-filtered counter began on June 24; 110+ Pro purchases recorded since July 14; downloads from 128 countries.
Build origin
First working version: three days in May 2026, about 4,000 lines of Swift, with Claude as the coding partner. Shipping continuously since; 1.6.2 in September 2026.

Copy and paste

Ready to use, no rewriting.

Every block from here down copies to the clipboard with one click: descriptions, boilerplate, directory listings. The bios in About Steve, above, copy the same way and are Steve's own wording.

Ready-to-publish copy

Product descriptions, three lengths.

Copy whichever fits your space. Click the button to copy the text to your clipboard.

Boilerplate · About Tellie

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands, made by Steve Chazin. It follows the words a speaker actually says, keeps their place through pauses and ad-libs, and uses Stagehand to track the points they still need to cover. Speech processing stays on the Mac, with no account and no telemetry. Tellie requires macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. The teleprompter is free forever; Tellie Pro is $29 once for up to 3 Macs.

Short · 53 words

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands. Say it your way; Tellie keeps up. Tucked inside your camera notch, it follows the words you actually say in 40+ languages, checks off your key talking points via Stagehand, keeps you on time, and stays invisible on Zoom. Download free for macOS 14+ at tellieapp.com.

Medium · 91 words

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands. It turns the MacBook notch into an invisible digital stagehand. Standard prompters force you to read at a fixed speed. Tellie uses on-device speech recognition to follow your natural pace, waiting patiently whenever you ad-lib. With its Stagehand logic, you can mark critical talking points inside your script. Tellie tracks your time budget, highlights covered sections in green, and alerts you before important points slip out of reach. With Voice Follow on it can advance Keynote slides as you finish a slide’s notes, it stays hidden from video calls, and it processes everything on your Mac. The teleprompter is free forever; every install includes 10 days of Pro, no card or account. tellieapp.com

Long · 180 words

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands. It transforms the camera notch into a voice-aware teleprompter and presentation co-pilot. Designed to keep your eyes locked on the lens during videos, sales pitches, and live talks, Tellie matches your spoken words in real time across more than 40 languages with zero audio leaving your Mac.

Tellie does not just follow your script. It helps you deliver on your intentions. Using simple markdown tags in your text, Tellie's Stagehand feature watches your key points, calculates your remaining time against your actual speaking pace, and checks off topics as you cover them, even when you improvise out of order. In Presenter Magic mode, Keynote notes appear in the notch and slides turn automatically when you wrap up a thought. Take Coach debriefs each take privately on the Mac, and Companion turns a phone, tablet or laptop into a prompter, remote and checklist over your own Wi-Fi. For developers, autonomous AI agents can push status alerts straight to your sightline.

Tellie stays completely invisible to Zoom participants and screen recorders. Its first working version was built in three days in May 2026 by former Apple product executive Steve Chazin, with Claude as a pair programmer, while visiting his granddaughter Ellie in Vermont; it has shipped continuously since. Tellie requires macOS 14 or later on an Apple silicon Mac. The teleprompter stays free forever, every install includes 10 days of Pro, and Pro is $29 once for up to 3 Macs with a 14-day refund. tellieapp.com

Paste-ready

Directory listings.

Blurbs cut to the lengths app directories ask for, plus the tags and the categories. Every block copies with one click.

Taglines · the first one is the primary

The Mac teleprompter that understands.

Tellie is what we call an unprompter.

It tracks what you didn't say.

Read fearlessly.

Support line

Say it your way. Tellie keeps up.

Subtitle · 25 characters (fits a 30-character field)

Teleprompter that understands

Short listing · 69 characters (fits 80)

The Mac teleprompter that understands. Say it your way. Tellie keeps up.

Meta description · 149 characters (fits 160)

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands. Say it your way; Tellie keeps up. It checks off your points as you hit them and keeps you on time.

Long listing · 254 characters (fits 255)

Tellie is the Mac teleprompter that understands. Say it your way; Tellie keeps up. Tucked in your camera notch, it follows the words you say in 40+ languages, checks off key points via Stagehand, and stays invisible on Zoom. Free at tellieapp.com.

Tags, categories, and the boilerplate fields

teleprompter, unprompter, mac teleprompter, notch, voice follow, speech recognition, presentation, keynote, public speaking, video creator, actor, self-tape, podcast, accessibility, privacy, on-device

Categories: Productivity, Video, Presentation, Utilities

Price: Free with in-app Pro upgrade ($29 one-time). Platform: macOS 14 or later. Developer: Steve Chazin. Website: tellieapp.com. Support: steve@skytech.io.

Access and contact

Want to try it, or want to talk?

Try Tellie

Everything in this kit is switched on for the first 10 days. No credit card, no sign-up, nothing to cancel. After that Tellie stays a complete teleprompter for free, and Pro is $29 once. No press copy or reviewer code needed: the trial is the full product.

Download Free for Mac

Talk to Steve

Steve is available for interviews, product demonstrations, podcast appearances and background conversations, on Apple and Steve Jobs, AI-assisted software development, product design in the AI era, on-device privacy, and where personal software goes next.

Steve Chazin
steve@skytech.io
LinkedIn · X · skytech.io

The story behind the story

Read how Tellie happened.

I Built a Mac App in 3 Days (And You Can Too)

The beginning of the experiment: building Tellie with AI without knowing how to code a Mac app.

The AI Wrote the Code. So What Did I Actually Do?

The uncomfortable question at the center of AI-assisted creation: what does the human contribute?

I Built the App. My AI Told Me What It Was For.

When the AI began surfacing uses for Tellie that Steve had not imagined.

The Feature AI Couldn't Imagine

The Stagehand story: how repeated failure with AI produced a human product insight.

Digital RenAIssance

The larger idea behind the experiment.

Earlier press releases are kept in the press archive.

Tellie isn't trying to make you better at reading a script.

It's trying to make you better at talking to people.

Try Tellie free Talk to Steve